Darwin notched up at 25.9 per cent against 24.5 per cent last year.

In contrast, Sydney was the most profitable city for apartments although over the quarter the number of loss making unit resales are rising.

House profits slow

Despite that, house sellers in Australia capital cities still reaped nearly $10 billion in profits in the three months to June 2016, Corelogic says.

Apartment sellers made $2.8 billion.

While these total numbers were down compared to last year, average profit a property sold was still high indicating there has been no cooling in the overall housing markets.

Sold capital city houses returned an average profit of $363,442 in the quarter, and units collected an average profit of $229,596. Both similar to last year.

Sydney and Melbourne - despite its weaker apartment sales - were the two capital cities propping up profitable sales.


In Sydney, more than 97 per cent of sales of houses and units earned a profit whereas in Melbourne, 97.9 per cent of house sales were profitable while a smaller 90.7 per cent of unit sales were profitable.

Houses have always sold better than apartments and the June quarter was no different.

"Houses have typically recorded a superior rate of capital growth to that of units and those houses reselling at a profit tend to record a much greater profit than units. These factors go some way to explaining why units are recording a much higher proportion of loss-making resales than houses," senior research analyst Cameron Kusher said.

"Another point to consider is ownership - units rather than houses are more likely to be owned by investors. The ability to offset losses on investment properties against future capital gain is likely to provide investors with much more of an incentive to sell at a loss than owner occupiers."

Reflecting the importance of holding property as long term investment, nationally, homes which resold at a profit were held for an average of 10.3 years, whereas homes which sold at a loss were held for about 6.3 years.

Prices of homes held for at least 17.7 years, doubled.