Australian property 'to keep growing'

The Australian property market will continue to see growth and rising prices, an expert has said.

Economist with the Australian Property Monitors Matthew Bell argued that the removal of government incentives to boost first-time buyers is showing no signs of slowing the bottom end of the market, Your Mortgage reports.

He added: "And although interest rates are rising, this is not expected to affect prices until late 2010 and possibly 2011."

At the same time, Mr Bell noted, some parts of the country still offer affordable options as their recoveries have not been as strong, giving the examples of Queensland and Western Australia as states that have been slower to pick up but are set to grow in 2010.

Australia was shown to be one of the best performing nations over the past year for price rises, according to the most recent Knight Frank Global House Price Survey.

Head of residential research Liam Bailey stated that a major cause of this was Australia being left "relatively unscathed by the credit crunch".