A History of Housing Prices in Australia 1880-2010

This paper introduces series of house and land prices for Australia’s major capital cities for the period 1880-1970 which, spliced to modern data, give series spanning 1880-2010. The broad trends in prices for houses, land and rents highlight no significant movement in real prices for the first seventy years followed by a persistent and significant trend rise in prices. Cycles in house prices and housing activity played a major part in each of the seven major economic cycles in this period, the first associated with the 1880s boom/1890s depression and finishing with a major cycle which commenced in the mid-1990s.