Auction market powers on amid extended Melbourne lockdown

Judging by the numbers, the week of 6 June is shaping up to be the second busiest of this year, but CoreLogic believes current figures are likely to be revised down after it was announced on Wednesday that the Melbourne lockdown would be extended by an additional seven days.

Under the lockdown, businesses are restricted from trading and residents are unable to travel any further than 10 kilometres from their home and for five essential reasons only.

“We will likely see a large number of properties withdrawn or rescheduled to a later date as we saw last week,” CoreLogic highlighted.

Last week, the 1,451 Melbourne homes originally scheduled for auction dropped to 1,246 by final collection following the lockdown announcement.

This week, Melbourne has 1,452 homes set to go under the hammer – still the highest among the capital cities.

In Sydney, the figure is slightly smaller standing at 1,227, but it’s an improvement on last week’s 1,174 and last year’s 398.

Meanwhile, unlike Melbourne and Sydney, most of the smaller capital cities are expected to see lower or steady volumes with Brisbane in the lead with 156 auctions, followed by Adelaide with 155, Canberra with 93, Perth with 14 and Tasmania with four.

Last week’s results

The week ending 30 May 2021 saw 2,905 auctions held across the capital cities, which returned a final auction clearance rate of 73.5 per cent – the lowest clearance rate recorded across the combined capital cities this year.

All capital cities except Canberra and Brisbane saw clearance rates fall over the week.

Canberra retained the crown for the highest final clearance rate of 88.2 per cent out of 93 auctions, followed by Sydney at 76.0 per cent out of 1,174 auctions and Adelaide with 74.8 per cent out of 161 auctions.

Melbourne and Brisbane followed, with final success rates of 71.7 per cent and 70 per cent, respectively.

Perth recorded the lowest final clearance rate at 29.7 per cent, falling by almost 30 per cent from the previous week – the largest decline recorded across the capital cities.