House Prices going UP

RP Data's hedonic index shows Sydney house values have gone up 12% in the eleven months to last November. The hedonic index compares similar properties, not just average prices in an area. Using average prices gives misleading results when some suburb experiences a major new development, with lots of new Macmansions replacing shacks. Suddenly the conventional indices show that suburb as having experienced "200% price rises in a year", simply meaning that the average price of the new mansions is much higher than that of the shacks they replaced.
The hedonic index avoids this problem. It is necessarily based on a much smaller sample in each area, and so probably would not be too reliable suburb by suburb, but overall this 12% rise for all of Sydney is a very promising sign if you are a home owner.
Of course this eleven month period goes from the depths of the Global Financial Crisis to the recent recovery, and 12% probably just means houses are back at their pre-crash value. House prices fell 5% by end of December 2008.
In the same way shares have gone up about 50% since March, which is only of interest to those few brave people who bought shares in March! At that time most people were still desperately trying to sell their shares to meet debt repayments and margin calls!