Melbourne auction volumes are on the rise, with 987 properties going under the hammer during the final weekend of spring.
CoreLogic has revealed 61% of auction results collected so far were successful, which is down 4.5% from last week (65.5%). This time last year, 66.3% of reported Melbourne auctions were successful.
The south-east region of Melbourne is leading the way with an auction clearance rate of 74.2%, followed by the inner-east at 70.1% and inner-south at 69.2%. At the other end of the scale, the cities west region recorded a 40.9% clearance rate, followed by the Mornington Peninsula at 48%.
The strong auction results for Melbourne continued a trend which started in early October
Elodie Blamey (pictured above left), a mortgage broker with Melbourne brokerage Clover Finance said she had noticed a medium increase in listings in the suburbs of Kew and Hawthorn (located approximately 5km east of the CBD).
“I have also noticed a few people have been moving further towards the coast and areas like Geelong,” Blamey said.
“It is an interesting market at the moment and I am seeing much more level-headed purchasers as people are a lot more cautious with what they are looking to purchase, so the asking price vendors are chasing is becoming more realistic than what it has been in the past two years.”
Blamey said currently she was helping the majority of her clients purchase medium sized investment homes including townhouses and apartments.
“My clients are purchasing what would be considered a more conservative property, which is great because it allows for a longer-term investment with room to improve. Looking ahead to next year, I think people will start moving back to inner city suburbs, beach towns and smaller homes as it's going to become more about where you want to live rather than what you want to live in.”
Caitlin Fono, research analyst at CoreLogic said there was 2,393 homes taken to auction across the combined capital cities during the final week of November.
“This was the busiest week for auctions since mid-June where 2,528 went to auction,” Fono said. “While this was up 4.1% from the previous week (2,298), the number of homes taken to auction this week was -43.7% lower than this time last year (4,251) when selling conditions were more favourable.”
Fono said there were 933 auctions held across Sydney last week, up 19.9% from the 778 auctions held last week.
“This made for the busiest auction week the city has seen since late-May (1,109),” she said.
Across the smaller capital cities, Brisbane was the busiest auction market (154), followed closely by Canberra (152) and Adelaide (148). Adelaide recorded the strongest preliminary clearance rate (65.9%), followed by Canberra (62.8%) and Brisbane (47.4%). In Perth, three of the eight results collected so far returned a successful result, while the three auctions held in Tasmania this week were unsuccessful.
CoreLogic says looking ahead to the first week of summer, auction activity will continue rising with approximately 2,560 homes scheduled to go under the hammer across the combined capitals.
