Property prices in Australia’s next Olympic city increased during the first half of the year to June. Experts are predicting that prices will go even higher in the second half of 2023 as demand for real estate in the river city intensifies.

Brisbane real estate prices are being tipped to rise by up to 4 per cent by December as the demand for property strengthens after a positive first half of the year.

The PropTrack Property Market Outlook report for August predicted home values would rise between 1 per cent and 4 per cent by the end of 2023, before the market stabilised in 2024.

The January PropTrack outlook had Brisbane prices dropping by as much as 9 per cent by the end of the year. The PropTrack Director of Economic Research and author of the report, Cameron Kusher indicated a rebound in Brisbane values has caused the change to the forecast.

“We were expecting at the start of this year we’d see a bit of an increase in properties coming to the market and that mortgage stress would be tougher on borrowers than it was,” Kushner explains.

“Because of that, we were expecting prices to fall. What came to fruition was listings remained low and we saw buyers reappear over the first six months of this year. You had more buyers and low supply, and as a result people didn’t have scope to negotiate a lower price on a property.”

Mr Kusher went on to say while he predicted home prices would increase during the remainder of the year, the growth would be reasonable. After a sluggish start to the year for new listings, June saw improvement with more properties came onto the market.

He pointed out that more stock generally hits the market in spring and more choice means there is a better opportunity to negotiate a better price.

Mr Kusher believes 2024 could see “a different housing market in Brisbane” with a moderate change in property prices. In his opinion this will translate to between 2 per cent lower and 1 per cent higher for the year.

The PropTrack analyst warned that the outlook for next year is much less clear, however. He cited the well documented, large number of roughly 2 per cent fixed-rate borrowers’ mortgages that are set to expire and transition to around 6 per cent variable loans.

“Interest rate changes act with a lag, and as such, the possible impact of higher repayments on these borrowers won’t be seen until 2024,” Kushner explained.

The Property Market Outlook, which is based on REA data, found Brisbane’s median dwelling price was up 0.1 per cent overall for FY2022-23. The average selling price in the three months to June 2023 sat at $760,000 for a house and $500,000 for a unit.

The REA data shows that enquiries per listing were up 20 per cent in June 2023, however homes on realestate.com.au were there for an average of 18 days which is three days longer than compared to a year ago.