Australia Q2 house prices snap six-month fall, raises policy concerns for the RBA

House prices in Australia during the second quarter of this year, raising policy concerns for the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), as it tries to stimulate economic growth at the end of a long mining-investment boom without causing the housing market to overheat.

The average price of houses across Australia's capital cities rose 2.0% in the three months through June compared to the previous quarter, bucking a trend of six months of falls, data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed Tuesday.

In the country's commercial capital, Sydney, house prices rose 2.8% on quarter, leading the gains. Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory, recorded a fall of 2.4% over the same period. Overall, quarterly house prices rose by 4.1% compared with a year earlier.

Despite the slower growth, the total value of 9.7 million residential properties in the eight capital cities reached USD6 trillion, up from USD138.3 billion, bringing the average price to USD623,000, data showed. While on a quarterly basis, Sydney’s growth was slightly higher at 2.8 percent compared to Melbourne’s 2.7 percent, on a 12-month basis to June, Melbourne is way ahead with an 8.2 percent expansion versus Sydney’s 3.6 percent.

Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank of Australia has cut interest rates four times since the beginning of 2015, taking its benchmark lending rate to a record low of 1.5 percent, in an attempt to support price growth as home loan financing remained cheap.