Auction market stays cool as summer heat arrives

Auction volumes remained steady across the country last week but the arrival of summer has done little to fire up success rates.

The typical end-of-year ‘rush to the finish line’ is expected to look very different this year.

Auction volumes remained steady across the country last week but the arrival of summer has done little to fire up success rates, with the national average clearance rate remaining in the mid-40s for the fifth consecutive week.

An average preliminary success rate of 47 per cent was recorded over 2742 auctions nationally last week, which was just slightly higher than the 2701 auctions held the previous week.

Comparatively, there were 3291 auctions held nationally during the same week last year, with a combined average clearance rate of 60.3 per cent.

CoreLogic national auction commentator Kevin Brogan said the “rush to the finish line” typically experienced by the auction market in the lead-up to Christmas would look very different this year.

“We typically see activity through December stay fairly buoyant, but this year it will certainly be tempered by the much lower clearance rates,” Mr Brogan said.

“That being said, we’ve been following a pattern of softening for quite a few months now and the results this week actually show a bit of stability, which is promising.”

Sydney was host to 927 auctions last week, which returned a preliminary clearance rate of 50.6 per cent, although this will likely be revised down to the mid-40s when final results are collated later this week.

Sydney again outperformed Melbourne, where a preliminary clearance rate of just 45.8 per cent was recorded across 1381 auctions. Across the smaller auction markets, Canberra returned the strongest preliminary clearance rate of 50 per cent, while only 33.3 per cent of Perth homes sold at auction.