.jpg)
The number of houses sold at auction has dropped below 50% for the first time since December 2012, at a time that has also marked 12 months since house prices peaked.
The preliminary figures from last week show the Grand Final weekend impacted on capital city clearance rates with a drop in auction numbers.
But no sporting game can be blamed for the 2.7% drop in property values over the last year.
The CoreLogic September home value index results reported that half of Australia’s capital cities saw values track lower over the past twelve months.
The remaining capital cities, as well as regional markets, have recorded a slowdown in the annual pace of growth.
September, the twelfth month of consistently falling values, saw a 0.5% drop over the month.
Head of research at CoreLogic, Tim Lawless, said, “While the housing market downturn is well entrenched across Darwin and Perth where dwelling values remain 22.1% and 13.2% lower relative to their 2014 peak, Sydney and Melbourne are now the primary drag on the national housing market performance.
“We’ve seen Sydney dwelling values drop 6.1% over the past twelve months and Melbourne values are 3.4% lower. Not only are these amongst the largest annual falls across the capital cities, but considering Sydney and Melbourne comprise approximately 60% of the national value of housing, the weak conditions in these cities have a substantial drag down effect on the overall national housing market performance.”
While Melbourne prices have not dropped as much as Sydney’s over the last year, the auction rates for the city are considerably lower.
A total of 889 auctions were held across the country during the week up to 30 September, which CoreLogic said was a result of the AFL and NRL games and a number of states having a long weekend. There were 2,404 auctions held the week before.
Preliminary results show a clearance rate of just 49.1%, down from 52.4% the week before when final results saw volumes reach their highest level since the last week of April.
Clearance rates are continuing to take a hit. Over the same week last year, 969 homes were taken to auction returning a clearance rate of 66.3%.
Melbourne saw the most significant drop in volumes last week with only 69 homes taken to auction returning a preliminary auction clearance rate of 55.6%.
The number of auctions had dropped from the week before, where there were 1,161 auctions held in Melbourne and the final clearance rate came in at 53.8%.
At the same time last year, 122 auctions were held across Melbourne, returning a clearance rate of 87%.
Sydney had a much higher number of auctions, with 601 held in the week, down from 851 over the previous week. The preliminary clearance rate of 49.2% is down from 51.1% last week. One year ago, 607 auctions were held and the clearance rate came in at 64.9%.
