Auction activity is continuing to ramp up after the seasonal slowdown, with 929 capital city homes taken to auction this week, increasing on last week when 536 auctions were held as of final figures. The higher week on week activity returned a preliminary auction clearance rate of 54.1 per cent. While this is higher than the final auction clearance rate last week (42.8 per cent), it’s expected this will revise lower as the remaining results are collected to remain around the mid-to-low 40 per cent range.
Although clearance rates and activity remain low, the early flow of auction data for 2019 is showing a subtle bounce back in the clearance rate relative to the lows recorded through December last year which is a seasonal trend similar to what has been seen over previous years.
Comparing results to one year ago, volumes and clearance rates are significantly lower than what were seen over the corresponding week last year, when 1,470 capital city homes went to auction and 63.7 per cent sold.
Looking at results across each of the individual capital cities, volumes were higher over the week across all auction markets with the exception of Adelaide where activity was down.
Melbourne was the busiest auction market this week, in terms of volumes with 352 auctions held across the city, returning a preliminary auction clearance rate of 53.7 per cent. This is quite a bit lower than what we were seeing last year, when 70.7 per cent of homes sold over the same week when volumes were higher (619).
There were 321 Sydney homes auctioned this week, returning a preliminary auction clearance rate of 59.2 per cent. Interestingly, Sydney was the best performing capital city auction market according to final results last week, while this week’s preliminary clearance rate is also the highest amongst the cities.
Across the smaller cities, Canberra returned a preliminary clearance rate of 56.3 per cent, while Brisbane’s preliminary result came in at 42.6 per cent.