Auction market cools in winter
There is increasing hesitation among home buyers to jump on the property bandwagon, with auction clearance rates dropping again over the weekend.
In Sydney, the auction clearance rate dropped to 60.7 per cent – the weakest Saturday result since May last year, according to Australian Property Monitors.
But despite the drop in activity, Sydney performed relatively well considering there were more than 500 properties up for auction – double the number of properties up for sale this time last year.
The most expensive property sold over the weekend was a six bedroom house in Waverly, which went under the hammer for a cool $4.76 million. The cheapest property was a one bedroom unit in Lakemba, which sold for $200,000.
In Melbourne, 63.3 per cent of the 960 properties put up for sale were cleared over the weekend.
The clearance rate was slightly better than last weekend’s rate of 61.8 per cent, but was still well down on the 80 per cent achieved this time last year.
In Brisbane and Adelaide, auction activity was fairly subdued, with the two capital cities recording clearance rates of 42.3 per cent and 50.0 per cent respectively.