Combined capital city preliminary clearance rate of 73.5%

The strong run of auction results continued to play out last week with a preliminary capital city clearance rate of 73.5%, although the early success rate has shown a subtle fade over the past two weeks, down from 76.2% over the week ending February 11th.

The relatively high clearance rates have occurred alongside a consistent rise in auction volumes, with 2,775 auctions held last week; the largest number of auctions so far this year and up 33% on the week prior (2,091) and 14% higher than the same week a year ago (2,429).

After holding above 80% over the past two weeks, Sydney’s preliminary clearance rate slipped a little to 77.3% across 981 auctions. Melbourne’s preliminary clearance rate also came down to 70.6%, the lowest so far this year but still well above levels recorded late last year.

Across the smaller capitals, Brisbane recorded the busiest auction week, with 168 homes taken to auction, followed by Adelaide (145), Canberra (85), Perth (6) and Tasmania (2). Adelaide recorded the highest preliminary clearance rate at 87.9%, followed by Brisbane and Canberra, with early success rates of 72.8% and 57.1% respectively. Two of the four auctions reported in Perth so far were successful, while the one auction reported in Tasmania was unsuccessful.

The past three weeks has seen the preliminary auction clearance rate revise an average of 6.1 percentage points lower on final results. With this in mind we are likely to see the capital city clearance rate finalised at around 67.4%. The number of auctions scheduled next week is set to ease a little with around 2,680 auctions current scheduled to go under the hammer.

All data to week ending  25 February 2024

Source: CoreLogic