Homebuyers facing limited spring bloom

Prospective homebuyers will have fewer properties to pick from this spring, traditionally the peak selling season.

Rachel and Geoff O’ Conor are selling their four-bedroom home, in Killara in Sydney’s north, in which Mr O’Conor has lived for 71 years. Picture: Jane Dempster

Prospective homebuyers will have fewer properties to pick from this spring, traditionally the peak selling season.

Markets in Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane have seen next to no lift in listings in recent weeks, while the number of properties hitting the market in Melbourne has halved because of its stage-four lockdown.

“Normally this is when we start to see listing numbers ramping up, but we’re not seeing any sign of that anywhere at the moment, even outside of Victoria,” said CoreLogic head of research Tim Lawless.

“In Victoria, listing numbers are falling rapidly, but that’s to be expected.

“In Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and, to a lesser extent, Perth, which seems a bit more buoyant, the major capital city markets haven’t seen a rise in listing numbers at all and they were already at very low levels.”

Auction activity has come to a virtual halt in Melbourne, with just 28 homes taken to auction on Saturday and a 33.3 per cent clearance rate, according to Core­Logic data.

Sydney, meanwhile, recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 69.5 per cent from 625 properties, down from 706 the week prior but up from the 528 listings that went to auction in the same week last year.

This time last year, Sydney recorded a final auction clearance rate of 75.7 per cent.

Across the smaller markets, Canberra saw the highest preliminary clearance rate, at 78.6 per cent, across 70 auction results, followed by Adelaide with a preliminary clearance rate of 69 per cent across 42 results.

As the spring selling season kicks off, retirees Geoff and ­Rachel O’Conor have put their property at Killara, in Sydney’s upper north shore, on the market with a guide price of $12m.

The four-bedroom home, on 3048sq m, has been in Mr O’Conor’s family for 85 years. After living in the property since 1949, Mr O’Conor said he and his wife were now ready to downsize.

Despite the uncertainty in the market, the campaign had started well, he said.

“We had 15 groups through it yesterday.

“That was the first weekend it’s been open and that was all inspection by appointment.”

The exceptionally low inventory levels across the major capital cities will help to keep a floor under property prices in the near term, Mr Lawless said, as he warned of the cloudier outlook towards the end of the year and into next year.

“We’re not seeing any sign of distressed stock being dumped on the market,” he said.

“Maybe that will start to change as we move towards the end of the year and bank leniency policies become a little bit less generous and we see a lot of the fiscal support start to wind back.

“I think it’s reasonable to ­expect there probably will be a rise in urgent listings coming on the market.”