Sydney’s auction clearance rate falls to lowest this year

“The trend in Sydney shows that it’s continuing to decelerate, so potentially when we report our end of month numbers, Sydney could be down 0.1 per cent, which would be its first monthly decline since prices bottomed out in January. At the moment it’s down to zero and still seems to be losing speed.”

Sydney-based auctioneer Clarence White said the market had cooled dramatically as higher listings offered buyers more choices.

“We had a very strong run-up in stock for eight consecutive weeks when auction volumes climbed more than 1000 each week in Sydney, so that sustained period of high stock level dramatically changed the supply and demand equation in favour of buyers,” he said.

“The high interest rate environment has made buyers very cautious, so that took some heat out of the market.”

Melbourne-based buyer’s agent Emma Bloom said market conditions in the city had also turned in favour of buyers as more listings came into the market.

“I went to a number of auctions over the weekend and quite a few had no bids because buyers now have a lot of properties to choose from,” she said.

There were 1401 homes taken to auction across Melbourne over the weekend, slightly lower than 1415 last week but sharply higher than 1045 a year ago.

Of the 995 collected results so far, 66.9 per cent of auctions were successful, which is marginally higher than last week’s 66.1 per cent.

In Sydney, 958 properties were listed for auction, down from 1072 a week ago.

Nationally, volume fell marginally to 2918 from 3042.

In the smaller capital cities, Adelaide was the busiest auction market with 199 homes listed for sale under the hammer. Brisbane had 186, Canberra 143 and Perth 27.

Of the results collected so far, Adelaide posted an 81.7 clearance rate, Brisbane 56.3 per cent and Canberra 65.9 per cent.

Among the standout sales over the weekend was a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house at 11 Monash Gardens, Pagewood, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. The house sold for $2,560,000, which was $460,000 over reserve.

Ray White selling agent Phillip Elmowy said the sale was among the highest in the suburb over recent weeks.

“It was a really great result for the area after there was a recent sale close by two weeks ago that sold for $2.2 million. For a home like this, we’re looking at a suburb record,” he said.

In Melbourne, a three-bedroom house at 20 Truganini Road, Carnegie, 12 kilometres south-east of the CBD, beat expectations by $160,000 to sell for $1,210,000.

In Adelaide, a freestanding three-bedroom house at 28 Hurtle Street in the inner suburb of West Croydon sold under the hammer for $1,380,000, which beat the reserve by $180,000.