Homes listed for sale in Melbourne
jumped 14 percent from a year earlier, while Perth saw homes for
sale drop 11 percent, highlighting Australia’s segmented housing
market, according to SQM Research Pty.

Homes offered for sale in Melbourne rose to 51,194 in
August, the highest in the nation, while Perth’s fell to 18,053,
the Sydney-based research group said in an e-mailed statement.
Property listings rose 3 percent to 373,510 across Australia, it
said.

“Increasingly the market is segmented,” SQM Managing
Director Louis Christopher said in the statement. “It is
becoming difficult to discuss just one national housing market
and in my opinion, that will be to base line story for the
remainder of 2012.”

Home prices dropped 2.4 percent across Australia’s eight
state and territory capitals in August from a year earlier,
Brisbane-based researcher RP Data said yesterday. Brisbane had
the biggest decline among the nation’s five biggest cities,
falling 4.3 percent, while Perth had the smallest, losing 0.6
percent.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Nichola Saminather in Sydney at
nsaminather1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Andreea Papuc at
apapuc1@bloomberg.net