Melbourne warms up for festive season with second biggest ever weekend: RP Data's Melbourne weekend auction preview

With just one month to go until the end of 2013, the auction market has started to show the impact of the record run of weekends of over 1,000 auctions. This coming weekend represents the eighth this year, which is double the four over the whole of 2012. Interestingly the last time there were four successive weeks with over 1,000 auctions, the clearance rate was pushed into the 50s.

 
This weekend will be the second largest one in the city’s history.

 
The clearance rate may have dipped into the 60s but due to the very high volume of auctions the actual number of sales is very healthy.

 
In contrast the private sale market appears to be rather stable with key metrics not changing from 34 days on market for houses and vendor discounting of -5.6%.

 
Key data

 
•       Clearance rate week ending 24 November: 65.1%

•       Melbourne auctions expected week ending December 1: 1,494

•       Melbourne private sales time on market week ending November 24: 34 days (houses)

•       Melbourne vendor discounting market week ending November 24: -5.6% (houses)

•       Listings being prepared for market are 4.7% lower in month ending November 24

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Robert Larocca is Victorian housing market specialist for RP Data.