G'day
I guess most of the locals saw the news this week that Perth house prices have continued to increase. As widely predicted the rate of increase slowed down, for the last three months of last year prices in Perth went up by an average of 2.3% so that means about an extra $10,000 on a "typical" house. See
this article on the REIWA site for more details.
Not all suburbs went up though, 118 of the 277 suburbs recorded a slight price drop. Details for each suburb over the last year can be found
here. I guess by shopping around and doing your research before buying, "bargains" are still available.
Either way, this is a difficult time for many first home buyers, who traditionally have little or no deposit to cover the high fees associated with home purchase. There is an interesting article on the Professionals web site
here about the dropping number of first home buyers, in fact the lowest in 25 years. Many of the successful first home buyers are migrants coming over with an adequate deposit from the equity in their UK house.