The election result will set the scene for the remaining 2019 property outlook

The election result will set the scene for the remaining 2019 property outlook
Staff reporterDecember 7, 2020

There’s something about any holiday break.

It allows people with downtime to pause, reflect, seek feedback from friends and family and then react - and it certainly applies to property market sentiment.

Traditionally everyone returns from their summer break, tanned and feeling refresh, brimming with new-found optimism.

Hence most years – including 2019 – begin with stronger auction success rates than those that had seriously tailed off in the overburden exhaustion and distractions of December.

I can only recall one Christmas break that didn't then see a stronger start for the property market.

Easter is another pause in the sales marketing calendar, which allows the potential buyers and sellers time to reflect.

But that’s where Easter’s similarity to Christmas ends.

It tends to present itself as a rather more unwelcome interruption to marketing campaigns. 

This year's timing was later than many years, so vendors had plenty of opportunity to list ahead.

But there wasn't the typical rush to have properties sold before Easter – no super Saturday – and that might have also been partly because it overlayed with the NSW school holidays meaning vendors and their agent deemed many buyers to be otherwise preoccupied.

The listing market wasn't helped by the encroaching election and the nervousness as to its outcome.

The election will do more than just push listings to Saturdays on either side of election day, May 18.

Many agents reckon what happens after Easter sets the tone for the rest of the year, but this year it will be what happens post-election.

Estate agents have been increasingly complaining of a shortage of stock, but what they really mean is new sellable listings.

After all unsold private treaty stock sits at 26,000 plus houses and apartments, according to CoreLogic.

The consensus is that given that new listings remain a little light on, there’s a good chance of the auction clearance rate remaining at the current level or higher through winter.

But things are very fragile.

Prices are of course down, especially for stale stock, and this pricing revision has finally resonated through to vendor consciousness. Well slightly more than half of them, who are selling under the hammer.

Sydney currently ranks as the nation's strongest capital city auction market, a position it has held since mid February when it took the mantle from Adelaide.

Sydney's preliminary clearance rate also sits higher than this time last year.

But CoreLogic calculates Sydney prices are off in Sydney by close to 14 percent for their peak. That's almost double the national decline, but Sydney did rise by the highest level during the boom, up by around 75 percent. Sydney values are down $125,000. In regional NSW, values have declined by four percent or around $18,000.

And so given the choice many would-be vendors have understandably decided not to list, or do so publicly.

Therefore buyers face limited fresh choices and accordingly auctions prices can still sell at higher that the pre-auction marketing campaign estimate for quality property.

But there are plenty of losers. 

Cameron Kusher at CoreLogic expects the declines to continue over the coming months.

"With advertised stock levels remaining high and mortgage rates tracking around the lowest level since the 1960s (and potentially moving even lower later this year), active buyers are back in the driver’s seat to take advantage of improved housing affordability and the low cost of debt," he says.

 

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