Residential property listings across the country last month were down 24.2 per cent compared to January 2021, according to new figures released by SQM Research.

National property listings totalled 200,865 in January 2022, a fall of 8 per cent from the 218,415 listings in December 2021.

“Available properties on the market remain tight,” said SQM Research managing director Louis Christopher.

“At just under 201,000 properties available for sale, we are currently having the mildest of slowdowns in the national housing market.”

Brisbane suffered the biggest fall versus a year ago with a 37.6 per cent decline in listings, followed by Adelaide (-34.2 per cent), Canberra (-33 per cent) and Hobart (-27.8 per cent).

Falls were also recorded in Melbourne with listing down 18.2 per cent, Sydney (-8 per cent), and Perth (-2.3 per cent), while Darwin bucked the trend with a 13.1 per cent rise in listings.

Compared to December last year, a decline in listings was seen across every capital city, most notably Canberra (-12.8 per cent) and Melbourne (-11.5 per cent).

“Going forward, we are recording a move towards more auction listings over February with scheduled auctions up by about 15 per cent compared to this time last year. But we are not anticipating a massive surge in total new listings,” Mr Christopher said.

The number of new listings in January was down 27.6 per cent on a monthly basis, including significant drops in Canberra (-31.8 per cent) and Melbourne (-29.3 per cent).

Annually, new listings have risen 18.2 per cent in Perth and 13.8 per cent in Darwin and fallen 12.9 per cent in Melbourne and 10 per cent in Brisbane, with a national decline over the year of 1.8 per cent.

“With the prospect of higher inflationary pressures, we believe the risks are moving back towards the upside of a stronger market in the first quarter of 2022. Upon which APRA will be forced to take further action in the absence of any RBA rate hike,” said Mr Christopher.