How prices, rents and rates have changed over the past five years

Five years on from the start of the covid-19 pandemic, the property market is in a very different place.

When the pandemic started, some banks predicted a crash in property prices. Instead, the national median price fell just 1.7%, before rebounding. By March 2025, the national median was 38.4% higher than in March 2020, according to CoreLogic. That included an increase of 56.3% in the combined regions and 33.6% in the combined capitals.

Meanwhile, the median rent in March 2025 was 37.6% higher than five years earlier. House rents (38.7%) and unit rents (35.1%) recorded similar growth in that period, even though, in the early days of the pandemic, unit rents fell sharply due to the big drop in demand from international students.

The interest rate picture has also changed significantly over the past five years. The cash rate was just 0.75% before the pandemic; the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) then reduced the cash rate not once but twice in March 2020, to 0.25%, before reducing the cash rate again in November 2020, to a record-low 0.10%. In 2022, the RBA started reversing course; as of March 2025, the cash rate was 4.10%.

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