The cost of buying a home in Australia has reached yet another record high after climbing nearly 9 per cent over the last year.
According to the latest update to CoreLogic's home value index, the average price of a property is now sitting at $765,762 – an all-time high that is about $63,000 above what it was in February last year.
CoreLogic economist Kaytlin Ezzy said the increase came despite interest rate hikes and other cost-of-living pressures, and was due to the high demand for Australia's limited housing supply.
"The broad-based capital gains seen over the past year reflect the ongoing imbalance between housing supply and demand, which has helped to counteract the less favourable market and affordability conditions," she said.
"Despite three rate hikes, worsening affordability, and the rising cost of living, the increasingly entrenched undersupply in housing stock, and above-average demand thanks to strong net migration, has helped push values higher."
The increase wasn't confined to any one area, with CoreLogic finding prices rose in almost 90 per cent of markets across the country.
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Nor were the rises limited to just purchase prices, with renters also faced with significant increases in the past year.
"The same analysis found that 94.2 per cent of the 4,030 house and unit markets analysed recorded an annual rent rise, while nearly 40 per cent saw rental values rise by 10 per cent," Ezzy said.
"After bottoming out in October at 8.1 per cent, the annual trend in national rent values has seen an uptick in recent months, to 8.5 per cent in February, due in part to a recent acceleration in capital city house rents and regional rents.
"Over the past few years, rental growth has been skewed to capital city units, but as unit rent affordability has been eroded, some prospective tenants may be shifting towards house rentals, likely reforming larger households as a way of sharing the rental burden or to more affordable markets further afield."
