Capital cities see second busiest auction week of the year

According to the latest CoreLogic PropertyPulse, last week was the second biggest auction week of the year (the busiest was the seven days ending March 20).

The market update found that even though auction volumes were close to record highs for the year, the clearance rate held above 70 per cent across the combined capital cities.

Melbourne maintained its position as the biggest auction market, with 1,534 auctions last week and a clearance rate of 78.4 per cent.

Sydney also performed well, with a clearance rate of 73.7 per cent selling over the week.

“The coming weeks will see auction activity fall sharply, and auction markets are likely to remain quiet until late [in] the first week of February when activity will start to warm up again,” the market update said.

Listing numbers start seasonal slowdown

The CoreLogic market update found that both new and total listing numbers have commenced their “seasonal downturn”, with the number of newly advertised properties peaking during the first week of November and total listing numbers peaking two weeks later.

However, despite the seasonal slowdown, the update indicated that new listing numbers remain 10.7 per cent higher than a year ago nationally and 9.4 per cent higher across the capital cities.

“Every capital city is now showing new listing numbers to be higher than at the same time last year, which is in stark contrast to the spring season when new listing numbers were generally tracking lower than a year ago,” the market update commented.

“Interestingly, total advertised stock levels remain lower than a year ago in the markets where dwelling values are rising the fastest (Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Hobart); a trend that suggest that low stock levels are contributing to the upwards pressure on housing prices in these cities,” it said.

According to the update, CoreLogic is currently tracking just over 240,000 properties that are being advertised for sale nationally.

[Related: Auction clearance rates are not fading through Spring as in previous years]