CoreLogic has released preliminary auction data for the weekend, with the combined capital city preliminary clearance rate rising to 74.0%, up from 72.8% last weekend and 64.2% in the same weekend last year:
Source: CoreLogic
The bounce in clearances came despite 2,723 capital city homes going under the hammer this weekend, which was the second busiest weekend of auctions so far this year.
Sydney was the only capital city to record a lower preliminary clearance rate, with 74.8% of auctions returning a successful result so far, down from 76.2% last week (revised down to 71.1% on final numbers) and the lowest preliminary clearance rate so far this year.
However, the success rate remains above the decade average of 72.2% on the preliminary rate and 68.1% on the final rate.
It was also significantly higher than the 67.9% preliminary clearance rate recorded in the same weekend last year.
Melbourne’s preliminary clearance rate rebounded to 72.4%, after falling to 66.2% over last week’s long weekend.
This weekend’s preliminary results were the second highest so far this year, after the second week of February (73.1%). With 1,387 auctions held, this was also the second most auctions held this year.
The next chart plots the trend in final auction clearance rates against the latest quarterly dwelling values and points to strengthening value growth:
The next chart, which plots the 28-day change in CoreLogic’s daily dwelling values index across Sydney, Melbourne and the 5-city aggregate level, shows that value growth has firmed in March:
CoreLogic noted that next weekend (i.e. the weekend before Easter) “is looking huge for auctions”, with around 3,400 homes currently scheduled to go under the hammer.
“It’s rare to see more than 3,000 capital city auctions in a week. In fact, if the scheduled volume of auctions holds at this level, next week is likely to be the largest volume of auctions held since the week prior to Easter in April 2022”, noted CoreLogic.
It will be interesting to see if auction clearances hold up in the face of surging supply.
