Talking to our landlords, owners, sellers, and tenants we are hearing that they are grappling with substantial rises in cost of living. They are sharing their stress of increases in energy gas and electricity, petrol and grocery bills. This is supported by RBA who announced that 35% of mortgage holders struggled to pay their home loan in September, interest rate hikes are making it more expensive to service mortgage debt and lenders are offering less finance to our would-be buyers.
The most asked question our team receive daily is how is the market? Over the past few months we are seeing locally how much the direction of the housing market is influenced by the volume of housing stock available. Though Melbourne has had persistent months of low stock our stock levels has increased 63% over the past 12 months. Other potential headwinds for property prices include further hikes in rates and rising costs of living, increased stock levels of 63% years on year. The culmination of these stresses are allowing our buyers to be discerning. It is proving that our vendors need to set appropriate prices and be willing to adjust prices to market expectations if they want to transact in this current market.
Realestate.com.au has released figures illustrating the past year regional median price houses sit at $600,000, unit prices at $405,000. By comparison our local market in Yarrawonga exceeds the regional median sitting at $706,000 for houses and slightly lower at $345,000 for units. However, we have observed locally unit sales have outpaced houses with average days on market at 54 days vs 76 for houses. Prices have fallen over the year in regional Victoria, locally we have observed a reposition on most properties and in some cases the range is between 8-15% on some properties.
We continually talk about the tightness of the rental market. We have observed higher rental returns and price growth is pushing gross rental yields higher from historic lows. This should be making investment in residential more attractive, however, we are seeing the contrary. Some investors are selling down because of higher land tax increasing and concern of possible introduction of rental caps as well as tighter compliance. It seems would be investors can enjoy risk-free returns from the bank as interest rates shift higher.
Our property management team have celebrated housing 144 tenants over the past nine months. These people have moved from the all over Australia from Norther Territory, NSW and Melbourne to name a few. They are excited to join and enjoy our beautiful towns and welcoming community. Though vacancy rates continue to be historically low we are optimistic that we can work with tenants and landlords to reach great outcomes for both.