A strong start to the year, with 71 percent of capital city auctions selling: Shana Miller
The first week of February shows auction market activity continuing to bounce back from the festive period slowdown, with almost twice the number of auctions held this week compared with last week.
CoreLogic RP Data was tracking 854 auctions this week, compared with 987 auctions over the same week one year ago. The lower number of auctions was mostly due to a low auction numbers in Sydney where there were only 255 auctions held over the week compared with 421 at the same time last year.
The lower number of homes put up for auction highlights that vendors haven’t been as willing to put their homes into the auction market as they were a year ago. Auction numbers were actually higher than a year ago across Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.
Despite the lower number of auctions compared with last year, the preliminary auction clearance rate, based on the 621 auction results reported so far, was recorded at 71.0 per cent across the combined capital cities.
This week’s clearance rate was higher than at the same time last year (67.3%) however the clearance rate in Sydney continued to track lower than at the same time last year. All cities recorded a stronger preliminary clearance rate than what was recorded at the end of 2015, however, with auction numbers still gathering pace over February we should get a better gauge over the coming weeks as to whether the auction market is truly staging a rebound on higher clearance rates.
This week, 262 Melbourne auctions were held and so far 206 results have been reported. The preliminary auction clearance rate of 80.1 per cent is higher than last week, when across just 151 auctions, 69.9 per cent were successful. One year ago, Melbourne’s auction clearance rate was 60.7 per cent across 255 auctions. Across Melbourne, the busiest region for auctions this week was the Outer East, where 40 homes went under the hammer. Of the 30 reported results so far, 83.3 per cent have been successful. Melbourne’s Inner East recorded the strongest preliminary clearance rate at 93.8 per cent, however there were only 19 auctions held within the region and 16 results reported so far
The Sydney auction market was substantially weaker over the final months of last year when compared to earlier in 2015. Clearance rates fell from the high 80 per cent mark to the mid-50 per cent mark towards the end of the year. Given this, it is likely that a lack of vendor confidence is currently being reflected with only 265 auctions held this week, compared to 421 at the same time last year. Although auction volumes across the city were low, this week Sydney’s preliminary clearance rate was 70.2 per cent, a strong result compared to 44.9 per cent last week (across just 61 auctions), but not reflective of the 80.6 per cent last year. The best performing Sydney sub-regions this week were Inner South West (85.7 per cent across 21 results) and North Sydney and Hornsby, with a clearance rate of 80 per cent across 35 results.
In Brisbane the preliminary clearance rate was 55.8 per cent this week across 77 auction results. There were 111 auctions held in Brisbane this week, compared to 60 last week, with a clearance rate of 52.7 per cent and 109 last year when 47.6 per cent of auctions were successful. Further south, across the Gold Coast there were 33 auctions reported this week with 13 sales.
Adelaide’s preliminary clearance rate was 79.4 per cent this week, higher than last week at 61.1 per cent and also higher than one year ago (58.2 per cent). There were 104 Adelaide auctions this week, 97 last week and 94 held over the comparable week last year.
In the westernmost city, Perth’s preliminary clearance rate was 35 per cent this week and there were 37 auctions held. Last week, 29 Perth auctions were held and 44.9 per cent were successful, while one year ago 31 Perth auctions were held with a clearance rate of 40 per cent.
Across Canberra 67 auctions were held this week, compared to 27 last week and 69 one year ago. Based on preliminary results this week’s clearance rate is 72.9 per cent, higher relative to last year (67.9 per cent).
CoreLogic RP Data has recorded just 2 auction results across Tasmania this week with one sale.