Sydney homebuyers pounce on ‘perfect storm’ with 100 units sold in one day

Sydney’s pandemic property bounce shows no sign of slowing down with more than 100 apartments sold in a single day at one residential development.

Sydney’s pandemic property bounce shows no sign of stopping, with more than 100 apartments being sold in a single day at a new residential development in North Sydney.

Investor-dominated buyers snapped up 103 off-the-plan apartments unveiled in the latest stage of the major Melrose Park North redevelopment on Saturday, as auction clearance rates in the city neared the boom-watermark of 90 per cent.

It’s the latest indicator of a city hungry for homes, with fears of missing out driving consumers ahead of a predicted two-year long price rise for property in Sydney.

Victoria Sun with Rhys Morgan from Melrose Park Sales. Victoria is one of the 103 people who bought an off-the-plan home at Melrose Park North on Saturday. Picture: Richard Dobson

House prices in the city are predicted to soar by more than $120,000 in that time – rising from a median price in November 2020 of $1,010,000, to $1,131,200 in two years’ time, according to property analytics firm Finder.

The pandemic-bucking boom can be attributed to a “perfect storm” of low mortgage interest rates, government incentives for first homebuyers, and “pent-up demand” exploding, according to Finder senior home loans editor Sarah Megginson.

“During the pandemic, demand didn’t disappear – it was just suppressed,” Ms Megginson told the Telegraph.

“Now we’re seeing that pent-up demand in action.”

Potential homeowners are also getting aggressive when it comes to auction – with an 88.9 per cent clearance rate recorded in Sydney over the last week a signal of booming levels of consumer demand.

According to CoreLogic, Sydney hosted 844 auctions over last week. While it was down on last year’s figure of 1087, last year’s clearance rate of 76.6 per cent was blown out of the water by 2021’s successful sales.

“That is incredible – we haven’t seen a 90 per cent clearance rate since Sydney’s meteoric rise a few years ago,” Ms Megginson said.

“It show how many active buyers there are in the market and shows that people’s buying intentions are really strong.”

She added that tax concessions had made apartments a particularly inviting option to investors, something agreed with Burwood resident Victoria Sun.

Ms Sun, a 25-year-old private funding expert working for TCT Finance, was one of the homebuyers who purchased at Melrose Park over the weekend, adding to two properties she had previously bought at the site.

“The property market in Australia has come back strongly, so it’s good timing for investments,” she said.