"Housing prices are soaring, and some observers are predicting even more gains."
The latest count of weekly auctions by Australian Property Monitors shows properties are being put on the market in large numbers - and selling for hefty sums.
In Sydney, APM counted 784 listings in the week to Saturday - compared with 460 the week before and 504 in the same week last year.
The other major market, Melbourne, experienced a similar rise, with 1,140 listings last week, from 616 the week before and 957 the same week last year.
There were relatively smaller numbers in Brisbane and Adelaide, the other two markets reported by APM, but they showed a similar pattern of rising numbers on the market.
The proportion of listings ending in a sale is rising too, with the clearance rate on average for the four cities at 80.1 per cent last week, versus 71.4 per cent last week and 69.4 per cent a year earlier.
The results do not report the outcome of all listings.
Even so, it's clear that the number of listing is up, and the proportion of them leading to a sale is high.
There is a similar caveat with the price data.
The $1.1 million median price reported for Sydney - up from $942,750 a year before - is not be a perfect guide to the price level.
But it's clear that prices are high and that the recent trend has been strongly upward.
RP Data analyst Cameron Kusher produced a report last week showing that in Australian capitals the median value of a house was more than $1 million in 271 suburbs - 12 per cent of the total.
In Sydney, the proportion of suburbs in the million dollar club was almost one in four, while in Perth it was one in eight and in Melbourne it was one in nine.
But he's expecting those proportions to grow.
"With low mortgage rates and relatively high levels of buyer demand we would expect the proportion of suburbs with a median value of more than $1 million to trend higher throughout 2014," Mr Kusher said.
ANZ's head of Australian property research, Paul Braddick, came to much the same conclusion.
Mr Braddick was sceptical of more pessimistic analysis, based on "simple metrics" like house price to income ratios, claiming the market is in a "bubble".
Instead, he put the shift to higher prices in recent decades down to the shift to low inflation and the resulting fall in interest rates.
Reserve Bank of Australia officials have made similar comments about the housing market's rise in the context of the shift to low inflation.
This structural fall in interest rates has been capitalised into house prices, which are sustainable around current levels, Mr Braddick said.
And positive market conditions should push prices up strongly in 2014, he said.
Following that, they should continue to rise "broadly in line with average household incomes in the medium term".
