Melbourne and Sydney inner-city suburbs the focus of super Saturday auctions weekend

The inner suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney will ring out with auctioneers’ cries this weekend in what will be the first super Saturday auctions weekend in both cities for 2012. 

The REIV calculates there will be about 1,000 auctions in Melbourne over the weekend, the first 1,000-plus auctions weekend since the December 12, 2010 weekend, when there were 1,235 auctions held with a clearance rate of 57%. 

There have only been 21 weekends of more than 1,000 auctions since October 2003, according to REIV records, with the biggest being the March 15, 2008 weekend, when there were 1,351 auctions and a clearance rate of 67%. 

REIV spokesperson Robert Larocca says this weekend will provide buyers with “the greatest choice on a single weekend since the middle of December 2010”. 

“The highest number of auctions this weekend is in Prahran with 21, followed by 17 in Brighton, Camberwell, Essendon, Kew and Northcote. 

“On the eve of this weekend the year to date clearance rate is 62%. The last five weekends have returned clearance rates between 58% and 61%, which indicates very consistent demand despite the fluctuations on volume,” he says. 

This weekend last year there were 808 Melbourne auctions, with a clearance rate of 60%. 

Last weekend 778 auctions were held with a clearance rate of 59%. 

There are 702 auctions scheduled in Sydney during the weekend, the highest number since the November 27, 2010 weekend (779 auctions) and 23% more than the 431 auctions recorded last weekend, according to Australian Property Monitors (APM). 

According to APM, Sydney has recorded 15 weekends with more than 600 auctions scheduled dating back to September 2009. 

“It is a super Saturday. It’s the biggest since late 2010,” says APM research analyst Clinton McNabb. 

“It is up 8.7% on the equivalent weekend last year (that is the one prior to the Easter weekend).  This was the April 16, 2011 weekend, with 646 auctions,” he says.

In Sydney the busiest suburbs will be Strathfield in the inner west and Coogee in the eastern beaches, which each have 11 auctions scheduled, followed by Maroubra and Paddington with 10 each. 

Auction activity will come to a virtual standstill over the April 7 Easter weekend, with just 40 auctions scheduled in Melbourne and 23 scheduled in Sydney.