- Auction activity nearly doubled this week
- Sydney and Melbourne markets record lowest rates since April 2023
- Prices continue to rise with strong buyer demand and low stock levels
Auction clearance rates continue to hold above 70% despite the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) moving forward with its cash rate hikes.
According to CoreLogic, auction activity doubled this week, following the long weekend, and marked the highest number of auctions in 11 weeks.
Of the 1,483 results collected so far, 72.5% returned a successful result, slightly up on last week’s preliminary clearance rate of 72.4%, which was revised down to 68.2% at final figures.
It’s been seven weeks straight that combined capital city preliminary clearance rates have been 70% or higher.
Auction activity continues to be substantially higher than this time last year when just 55.2% of auctions held were successful.
However, Sydney and Melbourne recorded the lowest preliminary clearance rates since April 2023.
Melbourne the busiest
Melbourne was the busiest auction market this week with 863 homes auctioned across the city, though this was 31.8% lower on the same week in 2022 when 1,266 homes were auctioned. Melbourne had a preliminary clearance rate of 72.9%, based on 705 results collected. This was the lowest preliminary clearance in eight weeks, down 80 basis points from the previous week’s preliminary rate of 73.7% (revised to 68.7% at final numbers).
Over the equivalent week last year, a final clearance rate of 55.7% was reported.
Meanwhile, Sydney saw 772 homes auctioned across the city this week, the highest number in 11 weeks which may have been impacted by last week’s public holiday. This level of activity was 2.9% less than the 795 held in the same week last year. Sydney’s preliminary clearance rate of 74.5% is the lowest in seven weeks.
The percentage of properties captured as ‘passed in’ from the 581 results collected so far is 14.1%. This time last year, just 52.7% of homes auctioned across the city were successful.
For the smaller capitals, Brisbane hosted the busiest auction market this week with 138 homes taken to auction, followed by Adelaide (109), and Canberra (52).
Canberra recorded the highest preliminary clearance rate with 70.3% of results collected to date returning a successful result. Adelaide saw its preliminary clearance rate fall to 67.9%, and Brisbane’s preliminary clearance rate increased to 66%.
Across Perth, three of the six results collected to date were successful, while two of the four results collected in Tasmania this week were also successful.
Preliminary clearance rates
| City | Clearance rate | Total auctions | CoreLogic auction results | Cleared auctions | Uncleared auctions |
| Sydney | 74.5% | 772 | 581 | 433 | 148 |
| Melbourne | 72.9% | 863 | 705 | 514 | 191 |
| Brisbane | 66.0% | 138 | 94 | 62 | 32 |
| Adelaide | 67.9% | 109 | 56 | 38 | 18 |
| Perth | n.a. | 13 | 6 | 3 | 3 |
| Tasmania | n.a. | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| Canberra | 70.3% | 52 | 37 | 26 | 11 |
| Weighted Average | 72.5% | 1,951 | 1,483 | 1,078 | 405 |
Source: CoreLogic
Prices still rising
With auction rates still remaining strong, there is clearly still buyer demand and that is seeing prices continue to move higher.
Across the five largest capital city markets, prices rose 0.3% this week, to make values 1.2% higher over the past month.
Brisbane was the best-performing capital city this week, rising 0.5%, followed by Sydney at 0.4%, Adelaide and Perth at 0.3% and Melbourne at 0.2%.
In the past month, Sydney values have increased by 1.5%, followed by Brisbane at 1.1%.
So far this year, Sydney values are 4.4% higher, Perth values at up 2.6% and across the five major capitals, prices have risen 2.5%.
Meanwhile, stock levels still remain tight, with new listings down 20.6% compared to 12 months ago across the five major capital cities.
Total listings are also 18.9% lower than the same time 12 months ago.
