Auction volumes and the combined capital city preliminary clearance rate fell week-on-week with 1,672 auctions held and a success rate of 76.4%. This comes as Melbourne announces a 7-day snap lockdown resulting in the 3 largest capital cities now being in lockdown. Last week, a preliminary auction clearance rate of 79.2% was recorded, later revising down to 77.2% at final collection on Wednesday. Final numbers indicate that 1,761 homes proceeded to auction last week, down -15% on the initial predicted numbers. This week so far 10% of the original predicted count (1,860 auctions) have been rescheduled to a later date. One year ago, 1,150 capital city homes were auctioned returning a final auction clearance rate of 58.4%.
Capital City Auction Statistics (Preliminary)
Melbourne was the busiest auction market this week with 710 homes taken to auction, however this was down 15% on the initial predicted count as the city announced a lockdown coming into the weekend. Over the previous week, 656 auctions were held and one year ago 294 took place. A preliminary auction clearance rate of 73.5% has been recorded this week, which is considerably lower than the 77.1% preliminary result last week. Last week’s, final clearance rate came in at 77.2%, while one year ago a final clearance rate of 63.7% was recorded.
Of the result collected so far this week, 18% were reportedly withdrawn and of the 411 sold results 35.3% sold prior to auction.
Weekly Clearance Rate, Combined Capital Cities
There were 576 Sydney auctions held this week as the city remains in lockdown. A preliminary auction clearance rate of 80.4% has been recorded this week, which is slightly lower than the 80.8% preliminary figure last week, later revising down to 76.1% at final collection Wednesday. The city has shown resilience under lockdown conditions, with over 500-600 homes proceeding to auction each week since the lockdown commenced and the final clearance rate remaining well over 70% each week. Of the results collected so far this week, 14% were reportedly withdrawn and of the 403 sold results collected 63.3% sold prior to the scheduled auction date.
Canberra was the best performing of the smaller auction markets this week with a preliminary auction clearance rate of 86.7%, Adelaide followed with a preliminary figure of 78%. Brisbane was the busiest of the smaller auction markets with 160 auctions held, however, similar to other areas involved in a lockdown, the proportion of auctions withdrawn jumped over the week to 22.5% and a larger than normal proportion of auctions sold before going under the hammer (47.3%).