Tasmanian home owners are the biggest winners in the nation’s best- and worst-performing housing markets in terms of home value growth.

There was a “strong slant towards regional areas rather than capital cities” over the past year, according to analysis by property data firm CoreLogic.

Falling prices in the nation’s two biggest housing markets, Sydney and Melbourne, contrasted with soaring home values in traditionally more affordable areas.

The strength of regional areas reflects the fact that “as value growth conditions weakened nationally, the slowdown has been much more rapid across the capital city markets”, CoreLogic analyst Cameron Kusher said.

Australian Bureau of Statistics home price figures released this week show that $70.1 billion was wiped off the value of Australia’s 10.1 million homes across the September quarter of 2018, with the combined value of the nation’s homes falling to $6.8 trillion.

The mean price of a home in Australia fell by $9700 to $675,000 across the quarter according to the ABS.

Home prices have fallen by 8.1 per cent in Sydney, 5.8 per cent in Melbourne, 4.2 per cent in Perth and 0.8 per cent in Darwin over the past year, CoreLogic data shows.

Over the same period home prices rose by 9.3 per cent in Hobart, 4 per cent in Canberra, 1.4 per cent in Adelaide, and 0.3 per cent in Brisbane.

Home owners in areas with softening prices should brace for more value falls in the coming year, Mr Kusher said.

“The outlook for the housing market is for further weaknesses,” he said.

“Although the sharp falls of this year, especially in Sydney, are unlikely to continue at their pace over the next year, it would not be a surprise to see that in 12 months’ time additional SA3 regions across the nation have recorded annual value falls.

“More affordable regional housing markets with healthy or improving economic and demographic conditions are expected to hold up better in terms of growth than the more expensive and weaker capital city housing markets.”

The winners

Only 15 of Australia’s 358 SA3 regions (areas with populations of 30,000 to 130,000, although they can be less or more) saw double-digit value growth over the year to November.

Ten were in Tasmania.

Victoria had three of the top 15, while New South Wales and Queensland had one each.

Only 14.3 per cent of SA3 regions nationally recorded an annual rise in dwelling values of 5 per cent or more.

Tasmania’s south-east region recorded the strongest value growth nationally over the past year with home values rising by 16.3 per cent.

Sydney dominates list of losers

More regions recorded double-digit falls in home values than those that saw double-digit value increases over the past year, CoreLogic’s analysis showed.

There were 23 SA3 regions nationally where values plunged by double digits, with 55.7 per cent of all regions nationally seeing home values fall.

New South Wales dominated the list of regions where prices plunged, with 28 individual regions within the top 50 located in Sydney.

Areas of Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory also appeared on the list.

The Outback-South region of Queensland, which includes the major towns of Longreach, Charleville and Cunnamulla, saw the biggest hit to home values, with prices plunging by 15.6 per cent over the past year.