Housing markets face a brutal squeeze

For two years during the covid-19 pandemic, home-sellers in Quakers Hill, a suburb in the farthest reaches of Sydney’s sprawling west, raked in fortunes. Some 60 or 70 viewers would traipse round every house up for sale, recalls Josh Tesolin of Ray White, an estate agent. Buyers jostled at auctions, bidding well above the odds. “We’d ask for, let’s say, $1m and sell at $1.4m,” says Mr Tesolin. “The market back then was crazy—a very different picture to now.” This year prices in the neighbourhood have fallen by 20%, he estimates. Owners are pulling their homes, because they cannot sell them for as much as they want. The market is gumming up.