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Perth’s median house price has more than doubled since 2019 to cross the million-dollar threshold, with new research to send a chill down first-home buyers’ spines as it reveals WA households are spending nearly 40 per cent of their income on mortgages.
The latest figures from Domain’s December Quarter House Price Report, to be released this week, show Perth has become the sixth capital city to record a median house price of $1 million on the back of a 9.9 per cent quarterly rise.
It took two decades from 1994 to 2014 for Perth’s median house price to grow by $472,615, Domain’s report showed.
But it rose by almost the same amount in the four years from 2021, when the median was $622,421, to 2025, which ended with a median of $1,087,762.
Entry-level homes now cost almost three-quarters more than they did in 2019, according to the research, with the added $275,000 outpacing wage growth over the same time period.
The data reveals the explosion of Perth’s property market post-pandemic, as decades of steady growth accelerated to more than double the median house price over the space of just six years.
Perth’s median house price as of December 1994 was $143,394, according to Domain. It was $528,779 by the end of 2019 and rose slightly to $568,516 as the world was gripped by the COVID pandemic in 2020.
However, the median price then shot up to $663,140 in 2022, before reaching $764,480 in 2023 and jumping again to $918,902.
Market analysts, including Domain, had widely predicted Perth would end 2025 with a house price median above the $1 million mark.
Domain chief of research and economics, Dr Nicola Powell, said a rapidly growing population, chronic undersupply and increased investor attention had driven the price growth in Perth’s property market.
“When we look at the buyer segment that’s really grown in recent years, it has been investors. It’s been well above a decade average for WA,” Powell said.
Powell also said buyers from cities like Sydney – where the median house price is north of $1.7 million – would also look west as they were being priced out of their own markets.
She said the million-dollar milestone became a “psychological hurdle” for buyers.
“It just places it in a very different position,” Powell said.
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“And the fact that we’ve got many of our capital cities now with a median house price above a million dollars just really does show how stretched affordability has become.”
The Domain research also showed households in Perth were spending 39.5 per cent of their income on a median mortgage, which was up from 22.3 per cent in 2019.
Home ownership among 30-34 year-olds in WA fell from 67 per cent for those born between 1947-1951 to 56 per cent today, while more than 50 suburbs have seen house prices double in the past five years, including Orelia (up 154 per cent), Armadale (146.7 per cent), and Merriwa (136.1 per cent).
Predicted rate rises from the Reserve Bank this year would pinch people’s borrowing capacity, Powell said, which could temper the investor interest in the west.
“When you look at current home loans being financed is roughly sitting in about 38 per cent of home loans being financed to investors,” she said.
“For context, that is well above the decade average for WA, which sits at 27 per cent.
“I think what we’re we’re experiencing now is the upswing is coming to its maturity, it’s coming to its peak.
“It will start to slow down. It may not pull back, but we’ll certainly see prices not rise to the extent that we have done in previous years.”
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