Internal migration and house prices in Australia

Abstract

Australia is one of the most mobile countries in the world due to internal migration. This study provides the first evidence of the causal impact of internal migration inflow on house price changes across 237 statistical regions in Australia from 2014 to 2019. Employing a spatial correlation approach, the paper indicates that internal migration that amounts to 1% of the initial local area population is associated with a 0.52–0.71% increase in house prices in the three most populated states of Australia. Migration inflow has a significant positive effect on house price changes in metropolitan areas of Sydney and Melbourne rather than non-metropolitan regions.