We're now experiencing the strongest quarterly clearance rate since the June 2017 quarter across Australia's combined capitals.
Over the 3 months to September 2019, the clearance rate across the combined capital cities came in at 69.9 per cent across 16,730 auctions, the strongest quarterly clearance rate seen since the June 2017 quarter (71.7 per cent).
In comparison, the previous quarter saw a higher volume of homes taken to auction (18,104), however the clearance rate was a lower 55.5 per cent.
Over the September 2018 quarter, 20,653 homes were taken to auction, although the clearance rate was much lower at 53.6 per cent.
The weekly auction clearance rates have continued to improve over the September 2019 quarter, with the last 7 weeks of the quarter holding at or above 70 per cent, although auction volumes are lower than the previous quarter.
With the exception of Adelaide, clearance rates across the capital cities outperformed both the previous quarter and the September 2018 quarter.While Adelaide saw the clearance rate increase over the 3 months to September 2019, over the same quarter last year the clearance rate was higher across a larger number of auctions.
Looking at the non-capital city markets, clearance rates have increased across all five regions over the September quarter.
The Geelong region returned the highest clearance rate over the quarter (67.8 per cent), while the Gold Coast was the busiest region with 546 homes taken to auction.
Auction Market Review Highlights
Quarterly summary, capital cities
Weekly clearance rate and volume of auctions, combined capital cities
Quarterly summary, regional
Capital city sub-regions (Sydney)
Sydney sub-region summary
Clearance rates improved across all 15 subregions over the September quarter with 12 sub-regions recording a clearance rate above 65 per cent, compared to 3 over the June quarter.
Year-on-year, clearance rates improved in 14 of the 15 sub-regions.
Once again the busiest sub-region for auctions this quarter was North Sydney and Hornsby with 1,003 homes taken to auction, followed by the Eastern Suburbs, where 837 auctions were held.
Northern Beaches was the best performing sub-region in terms of clearance rates this quarter (81.1 per cent), followed closely by City and Inner South (80.1 per cent) and North Sydney and Hornsby (79.3 per cent).
Overall Sydney is tracking lower year-on-year for auction volumes, however clearance rates have improved significantly when compared to both the previous quarter and this time last year.
Capital city sub-regions (Melbourne)
Melbourne sub-region summary
Clearance rates improved across each of the nine Melbourne sub-regions over the September 2019 quarter with 6 of the sub-regions recording a clearance rate above 70 per cent.
The highest clearance rate was recorded across the Outer East region where 83.2 per cent of the 541 auctions were successful.
Melbourne’s Inner region had the highest volume of auctions this quarter (1,370), followed by the Inner South (1,092).
Year-on-year, while all 9 sub-regions saw higher clearance rates, they all saw lower auction volumes.
Overall Melbourne’s clearance rate continues to improve with 73.5 per cent of the 7,426 auctions recording a successful result this quarter, up from 59.5 per cent across 7,838 auctions the previous quarter.
Over the September 2018 quarter, auction volumes were higher with 9,629 homes taken to auction returning a lower clearance rate of 56.6 per cent.
