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A building (C) owned by Morgan Stanley's Australian real estate unit Investa Property Group can be seen in central Sydney, Australia, July 28, 2015. Morgan Stanley said on Monday it has agreed a deal to sell its Australian real estate unit Investa Property Group to China Investment Corp, a sovereign wealth fund. The $200 billion CIC made its biggest Australian investment just as Sydney's commercial property market braces for a glut of new office space, despite little apparent appetite from tenants to expand their footprints in the country's main business hub. Reuters/David Gray

Canberra sank to the lowest in the list of dwelling values this August, CoreLogic RP Data’s Home Value Index shows.

While overall, other capital cities witnessed an average growth of 0.3 percent, national capital’s dwelling value plunged 1.7. It meant Canberra values went down by 0.9 percent on a year earlier, followed by Perth (1.6 percent) and Darwin (4.6 percent) over a year.

However, with Sydney, Adelaide and Darwin also recorded monthly growth of 0.7 percent and 0.3 percent respectively. In August, Sydney property price growth surpassed all other capital cities, but Melbourne has been quick enough to match and even outpace it within weeks’ time in its quarterly values.

In case of August, Melbourne and Brisbane remained flat over August while Perth values dropped 1.3 per cent and Hobart fell 1.1 per cent.

Based on CoreLogic RP Data, head of research Tim Lawless suggested that Canberra’s vitality could be attributed to its small size and fewer dwellings. But he added that market has become stronger and rental values were seen to be improving.

“Overall the trend in Canberra has been relatively steady,” he said.

However, Domain Group senior economist Andrew Wilson indicates a different auction story altogether. In fact, Sydney’s auction clearance rate decreased while all other major capital cities witnessed an increase over the past month.

Sydney’s innumerable homes, which are up for sale, gave late winter auction market a run for their money. The share prices fell with clearance rate of 76.4 percent, straight down from 79.7 percent, whereas Melbourne’s clearance rate crept up to 76.2 percent, ahead of 75.2 percent in July.

Followed by Canberra that has 71.2 percent, Adelaide has 67.8 percent and Brisbane records 55.6 percent. Wilson said both the capital cities are moving to the opposite directions. “Things are heating up in Melbourne and the results are pretty impressive for other capital cities too,” he said.

Melbourne’s property market strength wasn’t just limited to auctions as in the quarter reports, Melbourne recorded dwelling values at 8 percent which was the highest compared to other cities whereas Sydney recorded 7.4 percent.

Meanwhile, the Housing Industry Association said the record for new dwelling approvals across Australia was broken over a year to July, with a total of 224,121. In July, only NSW and Victoria had witnessed growth in new home buildings whereas Tasmania, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia fell short of new buildings.

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