Sydney auction activity increases
The NSW capital is experiencing stronger auction activity, with the amount of homes going under the hammer increasing week-on-week.
According to CoreLogic’s Auction Market Preview, there are 472 capital city auctions scheduled for the week ending 24 May 2020 (up from 417 last week), with 245 of these in Sydney.
“Sydney is expected to be the busiest auction market for another week, with 245 homes scheduled to go under the hammer this week, up on the 194 auctions last week,” CoreLogic said.
“There are 123 Melbourne homes scheduled for auction this week, down by only four auctions on last week’s final numbers.”
Auction activity remains subdued across the smaller cities, with Brisbane (45 auctions) and Perth (nine auctions) the only capital cities set to see an increase in volumes.
Meanwhile, activity across Canberra expected to remain steady over the week (43 auctions) and quite a bit lower in Adelaide (seven auctions), CoreLogic said.
While volumes are up over the week for the combined capital cities, “auction activity remains significantly lower than what we would usually see, with 2,055 auctions held over the same week one year ago”.
A summary of last week’s results show the capital city final auction clearance rate came in at 60.4 per cent, surpassing the 59.9 per cent recorded the week prior.
“The improved clearance rate was across a lower volume of auctions with 417 held, down on the 480 held over the week prior,” CoreLogic said.
“Of the 349 results collected, 15 per cent were withdrawn, which was much lower than the previous week’s 22 per cent and the 50 per cent seen a few weeks ago, which is a contributing factor in the improvement of clearances rates over the last few weeks.
“The number of properties selling prior to the scheduled auction date appears to have normalised last week. Of the 209 sold results, 28.7 per cent were sold prior to the scheduled auction date, which was on par with what we would usually see.
“The previous week saw 43.8 per cent of sold results recorded as ‘sold prior’ and a few weeks ago sold priors accounted for 50-60 per cent of sold results.”