New home sales fell by 13.5 per cent in July 2022 in Western Australia, highlighting the impact of blowouts in the cost and time to build as well as recent interest rate rises now at 2.35%, now at the highest level since January 2015, but still slightly below the pre-COVID decade average of 2.56%.

A monthly survey of the largest volume of home builders was consistent with reports in recent months of a reduction in the number of people visiting display sites since the first cash rate increase in May.

But while the report showed a national slowdown in sales activity,  WA is said to be faring better than most other states; in July alone WA sales were up 8.2 per cent on the same month in 2019.

“We expect the impact of rate increases will continue to flow through the market for at least the next few months and compound the impact of increased building costs due to the constraints on material supply and local shortages of land and labour,” he said.

“This slowdown will, however, bring activity back down to more normalised levels, consistent with the post-mining recovery we had started to see before the pandemic.”