Holiday season lull lingers over auction volumes

Property research group CoreLogic has revealed that the housing market is off to a slow start following the holiday period, with the first week of auction reporting for 2020 showing that the combined capital city preliminary auction clearance rate stood at 65.5 per cent from the 608 capital city homes taken to auction.

However, it is likely that the week’s clearance rates will see the usual downward revision as final results are collected.

Comparing results from over the same week in 2019, the combined capital city preliminary clearance rate stood at 47.8 per cent from a total of 536 homes taken to auction in the first week of the year 2019, before being revised down to a 42.8 per cent final clearance rate.

The highest clearance rate over the week was recorded in Sydney (77.4 per cent from 151 auctions).

However, Melbourne saw the highest number of homes auctioned, with 208 held, returning a preliminary clearance rate of 67.7 per cent.

Adelaide recorded a clearance rate of 57.4 per cent from 102 auctions, followed by Canberra (70.6 per cent out of 69 auctions), Brisbane (40.9 per cent out of 50 auctions) and Perth (42.9 per cent from 21 auctions).

“It is important to note, volumes are significantly lower than what we were seeing at the end of last year and clearance rates are generally less indicative over periods of such low activity,” CoreLogic noted.

“As the number of auctions held increases over the next few weeks, we will be able to get a better view on auction conditions for 2020,” the summary stated.

Speaking after the Reserve Bank of Australia decided to leave the cash rate on hold at 0.75 per cent in its first rate decision for 2020, CoreLogic head of research Tim Lawless revealed that while lower interest rates haven’t had a significant impact on the domestic economy, national housing values shot up by 6.7 per cent since the first rate cut in June last year.

Mr Lawless predicted that the RBA will cut the official cash rate “later in 2020”.  

[Related: Home values bounce across most regions]

Malavika Santhebennur is the features editor on the mortgages titles at Momentum Media.

Before joining the team in 2019, Malavika held roles with Money Management and Benchmark Media. She has been writing about financial services for the past six years.