Home prices across Australia’s capital cities fell by 2.4% in the three months to December, trimming the total value of the country’s dwellings to $6.7tn.

Prices fell 5.1% across the whole of 2018, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Residential Property Price Index, released on Tuesday.

The December quarter drop was greatest in Sydney – where home prices fell by 3.7% – and Melbourne – which recorded a 2.4% fall – while values increased 0.1% in Adelaide and 0.7% in Hobart.

The total value of Australia’s 10.3m residential dwellings fell $133m over the December quarter, following a decline of $70.1m in the September quarter.

The ABS numbers indicated that 42,600 residential properties were added to the total stock across the country during the three months to December, but the mean price of homes fell $15,700 to $651,100 in that period.

Over the year, home prices in Sydney slumped 7.8% while Melbourne recorded a 6.4% fall, Darwin registered a 3.5% drop and Perth declined by 2.5%.

“While property prices are falling in most capital cities, a tightening in credit supply and reduced demand from investors and owner occupiers have had a more pronounced effect on the larger property markets of Sydney and Melbourne,” ABS chief economist Bruce Hockman said.

According to the ABS numbers, Sydney property prices have continued to decline since the September quarter of 2017 while the current statistics recorded the fourth consecutive quarter of falls in Melbourne.

The statistics showed an accelerating drop in overall Australian home values in 2018, with the 2.4% decline in the December quarter following a 1.5% drop in the September quarter and 0.7% drop in the June quarter.

The mean price of residential property was highest in NSW at $831,800, followed by Victoria at $690,900 and then the ACT at $665,600. The lowest was in Tasmania at $411,700.