According to the CoreLogic Quarterly Auction Market Review, the combined capital city clearance rate for the June 2018 quarter fell 6.8 per cent to just 57.8 per cent, making it the lowest quarterly result since December 2012 (which was 50.9 per cent).
The auction market has clearly been impacted from home values softening across Australia’s largest markets throughout 2018, with weekly clearance rates progressively declining over the past 3 months as fewer properties sell at auction.
The June quarter saw a total of 25,824 homes taken to auction across the combined capital cities. Although this represents a significant increase on the 20,701 auctions held over the earlier March quarter, it is much lower than 12 months previously (when 29,231 auctions took place over the June 2017 quarter).
Commenting on the results, CoreLogic research analyst Cameron Kusher said,”With dwelling values falling in the most auction-centric cities we are seeing a substantial fall in both auction clearance rates and the number of properties being taken to auction.”
In fact, the June 2018 quarter saw clearance rates fall across six of the seven markets, with Tasmania the only market to see an improved auction clearance rate over the 3 months. The most notable falls were across the 3 largest capital cities; attributing to the overall decline, with -6.2 per cent fewer auctions successful in Brisbane, -7.6 per cent in Sydney and -7.3 per cent in Melbourne.
The most auctions were held in Melbourne (12,330 auctions, with Reservoir the top suburb at 204 auctions), followed by Sydney (9,312 auctions, with Randwick topping the auctions list at 130) and Brisbane a distant third at just 1,574 auctions (Sunnybank was the top suburb here, with 47 auctions). The top 3 performing capital city suburbs (highest auction clearance rates) were Sydenham in Melbourne (86.7%), Northbridge in Sydney (85.0%) and Kambah in Canberra (78.3%).
Across the non-capital city markets, Geelong had the best performing clearance rate (70.2 per cent success rate across 553 auctions), but again - this was much lower than the previous March quarter when 83.3% of homes sold and fewer auctions were held - 458.
The Gold Coast is where the most non-capital city market auctions happened, 653 to be precise. This however represents a fall from the previous March quarter, and only 26.37% were actually successful: giving it the dubious honour of being the worst performing regional auction market in the June 2018 quarter. The Gold Coast was followed by other ‘less than 50% success’ auction areas of Sunshine Coast (36.4%), Woollongong (38.8%) and Hunter (49.3%).