Melbourne house prices keep rising

09/05/2007

May 9, 2007 - 2:27PM theage.com.au Healthy house price rises for Australian capital cities outside of Sydney are a sign of a healthy economy, economists say. But they say last year's interest rate rises have held back potentially stronger gains. Melbourne house prices rose 1.5 per cent in the first three months of the year, more than the national average of 1.1 per cent, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) said today in its House Price Index report. But the nation's largest housing market, Sydney, bucked the national trend to post a 0.4 per cent decline in the March quarter, growing at a rate of just 1.5 per cent in the past year. National house prices rose 8.6 per cent in the year to the March quarter.