Perth sellers cashing in with record gains on the property market amid housing crisis, report reveals

The profits made on WA homes have hit an all-time high, with a new report showing Perth sellers are walking away with more than $350,000 when they offload their property. Cotality’s new Pain and Gain report shows the median nominal profit from resales in Perth is $355,450 — which is the biggest amount recorded for WA in the 20-year series. The research is based on analysis of every single home sale in Perth in the three months to September, with profitable sales deemed to be those which earn sellers more than they originally paid for a property. The rate of profitability eased a bit on the previous quarter, from 98.3 per cent in the three months to June, to 98.2 per cent in the most recent quarter. The median hold time was 8.8 years. The Pain and Gain series shows biggest-ever proportion of profitable sales was in the three months to May this year, when 98.5 per cent of all sales were profitable. Perth had the third-highest rate of profitability of capital city sellers. But while most are walking away with handsome profits, some properties are selling at a loss — which means sellers get less at re-sale than they paid when they bought the home. The median loss for the 1.8 per cent of homes that sold for less than the original purchase price in Perth in the September quarter was $73,000. “Perth home sellers generally continued to enjoy strong capital gain windfalls in 2025, with home values rising 4.6 per cent in the September quarter,” the report stated. “However, recent strong gains may also be prompting owners who bought at the peak of previous mining boom to cut their losses, and cash out following such an extreme period of growth over the past five years. “This may explain why the market is still seeing loss-making sales that are associated with relatively long hold periods of 9.6 years at the median.” A massive 94.5 per cent of homes sold in regional WA in the September quarter sold for a profit, with a median $235,000 gain and a 7.7 year hold period. Of the 5.5 per cent of sales in the regions ending in a financial loss, the median amount was $48,772, and the hold period was 14.4 years.