Property Market – Page 143 – Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog

The Property Imperative Weekly – 31 March 2018

Welcome to the Property Imperative Weekly to 31st March 2018.

Watch the video or read the transcript.

In this week’s review of property and finance news we start with the latest CoreLogic data on home price movements.

Looking at their weekly index, after last week’s brief lift, values fell 0.17% in the past week and as a result Sydney home values have now declined by a cumulative 4.2% over the past 29-weeks, with values also down 4.1% over the past 34 weeks. Sydney’s quarterly growth rate remains firmly negative, down 1.8% according to CoreLogic and annual growth is also down 2.2%.

More granular analysis shows the most significant falls in higher value property, and also in high-rise apartments. Our own analysis, and feedback from our followers is that asking prices are falling quite consistently now, and the same trend is to be see in Brisbane and Melbourne, our largest markets. This despite continued strong migration. We see two trends emerging, more people getting desperate to sell, so putting their property on the market, and having to accept a deeper discount to close a sale.

As we showed this week in our separate videos on the latest results from our surveys, down traders in particular are seeking to release capital now, and there are more than 1 million who want to transact. On the other hand investors are fleeing, though some are now also being forced to sell thanks to the switch from interest only to more expensive principal and interest loans.

This is all consistent with the latest auction results, which Corelogic also reported. They said that volumes last week broke a new record with 3,990 homes taken to auction across the combined capital cities in the lead up to Easter, which exceeded the previous high of 3,908 over the week ending 30th November 2014. The preliminary clearance rate was reported at 65.5%, but the final auction clearance rate fell to 62.7 per cent last week, down from 66.0 per cent across 3,136 auctions the previous week. Over the same week last year, 3,171 auctions were held, returning a significantly stronger clearance rate (74.5 per cent).

CoreLogic said that Melbourne’s clearance rate last week was 65.8 per cent across 2,071 auctions, making it the busiest week on record for the city. In comparison, there were 1,653 auctions held across the city over the previous week, returning a clearance rate of 68.7 per cent. This time last year, 1,607 homes were taken to auction, and a clearance rate of 78.9 per cent was recorded. Sydney was host to 1,383 auctions last week, the most auctions held across the city since the week leading up to Easter 2017 (1,436), while over the previous week, 1,093 auctions were held. The clearance rate for Sydney fell to 61.1 per cent, down from 64.8 per cent over the previous week, while this time last year, Sydney’s clearance rate was a stronger 75.8 per cent.

Across the smaller auction markets, auction volumes increased week-on-week, however looking at clearance rates, Adelaide (64.6 per cent) and Canberra (69.1 per cent) were the only cities to see a slight rise in the clearance rate over the week.

The Gold Coast region was the busiest non-capital city region last week with 87 homes taken to auction, while Geelong recorded the highest clearance rate at 79.7 per cent across 75 auctions.

Given the upcoming Easter long weekend, auction volumes are much lower this week with only 540 capital city auctions scheduled; significantly lower than last week when 3,990 auctions were held across the combined capital cities.

The next question to consider is the growth in credit. As we discussed in a separate blog, credit for housing, especially owner occupied mortgages is still running hot. The smoothed 12 months trends from the RBA, out last Thursday, shows annualised owner occupied growth registering 8.1%, up from last month, investor lending falling again down to 2.8% annualised, and business credit at just 3.6%

Looking at the relative value of lending, in seasonally adjusted terms, owner occupied credit rose 0.71% to $1.15 trillion, up $8.08 billion, while investment lending rose 0.12% to $588.3 billion, up just 0.69 billion. Business lending rose 0.17% to $905 billion, up 1.55 billion and personal credit fell 0.15%, down 0.22 billion to $152.2 billion.

Note that the proportion of investment loans fell again down to 33.9%, and the proportion of business lending to all lending remained at 32.4%, and continues to fall from last year. In other words, it is owner occupied housing which is driving credit growth higher – if this reverses, there is a real risk total credit grow will run into reverse. Again, we see the regulators wishing to continue to drive credit higher, to support growth and GDP, yet also piling on more risks, when households are already terribly exposed. They keep hoping business investment and growth will kick in, but their forward projections look “courageous”. Remember it was housing consumption and Government spending on infrastructure which supported the last GDP numbers, not business investment.

Now, let’s compare the total housing lending from the RBA of $1.74 trillion, which includes the non-banks (though delayed, and partial data), with the APRA $1.61 trillion. The gap, $130 billion shows the non-bank sector is growing, as historically, the gap has been closer to $110 billion. This confirms the non-bank sector is active, filling the gap left by banks tightening. Non-banks have weaker controls on their lending, despite the new APRA supervision responsibilities. This is an emerging area of additional risk, as some non-banks are ready and willing to write interest only and non-conforming loans, supported by both new patterns of securitisation (up 13% in recent times) and substantial investment funds from a range of local and international investors and hedge funds.

Once again, we see the regulators late to the party. This continues the US 2005-6 playbook where non-conforming loans also rose prior to the crash. We are no different.

The ABS released more census data this week, and focussed on the relative advantage and disadvantage across the country. Ku-ring-gai on Sydney’s upper north shore is Australia’s most advantaged Local Government Area (LGA). Another Sydney LGA, Mosman, which includes the affluent suburbs of Balmoral, Beauty Point and Clifton Gardens, has also been ranked among the most advantaged. In fact, SEIFA data shows the 10 most advantaged LGAs in Australia are all located around the Northern and Eastern areas of Sydney Harbour and in coastal Perth.

The most disadvantaged LGA is Cherbourg, approximately 250 kilometres north-west of Brisbane (QLD), followed by West Daly (NT). The 10 most disadvantaged LGAs in Australia can be found in Queensland and the Northern Territory.

The latest data has found that more than 30 per cent of people born in China, South Africa and Malaysia live in advantaged areas and less than 10 per cent reside in disadvantaged areas. Meanwhile, 40 per cent of Vietnamese-born live in disadvantaged areas and only a small proportion (11 per cent) live in advantaged areas.

People of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin are more likely to live in the most disadvantaged areas with 48 per cent living in the bottom fifth most disadvantaged LGAs, compared to 18 per cent of non-Indigenous people. Overall, only 5.4 per cent of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people live in areas of high relative advantage compared with 22 per cent of non-Indigenous people.

What the ABS did not show is that there is a strong correlation of those defined as advantaged to valuable real estate – home price rises have both catalysed the economic disparities across the country, and of course show the venerability that more wealthy areas have should home prices fall further. The paper value of property is largely illusory, and of course only crystallises when sold.

The HIA reported that new home sales declined for the second consecutive month during February 2018 overall, but the markets were patchy, based on results contained in the latest edition of their New Home Sales report – a monthly survey of the largest volume home builders in the five largest states.

Despite the fact that the overall volume of sales declined during February, reductions only occurred in two of the five states covered by the HIA New Home Sales Report – the magnitude of these reductions outweighed the increases which took place elsewhere. The largest fall was in Queensland (-16.3 per cent) with a 9.9 per cent contraction recorded in WA. The largest increase in sales was in NSW (+11.7 per cent), followed by SA (+10.3 per cent) and Victoria (+4.8 per cent).

Finally, we walked through our survey results in a series of separate videos, but in summary, the latest release of the Digital Finance Analytics Household Survey to end March 2018, helps to explain why we think home prices are set to fall further by drawing on our 52,000 sample, from across Australia.

This chart, which looks across our property segments, shows that both portfolio property investors (who hold multiple properties) and solo investors (who hold one, or perhaps two) intentions to transact are tanking, down 8% since December 2017. This is because credit is less available, capital growth has stalled, and in fact only the tax breaks remain as an incentive! This decline started in 2015, but is accelerating. Remember that around one thirrd of mortgages are for investment purposes, so as this demand dissipates, the floor on prices starts to shatter.

Whilst there are offsetting rises from down traders (who are seeking to release capital before prices fall further) and first time buyers (who are being “bribed” by first owner grants) there is a significant net fall in demand. This pattern is seen across the country, but is most prevalent in our two biggest markets of Sydney and Melbourne.

Refinancing is up a little, thanks to the attractive discounts being offered by many lenders, and the prime driver is to reduce monthly repayments, as currently household finances are under pressure. We release the latest mortgage stress analysis in a few days.

And if you want to think about the consequences of all this, then watch our commentary on the Four Scenarios which portrays how the property and finance sector may play out, and compare the comments from APRA with those in Ireland in 2007 in our latest video blog – they are eerily similar, and we all know what happened there!

The outlook for finance and property in Australia in decidedly uncertain.

Second Monthly Fall for New House Sales – HIA

The HIA says sales of new detached houses declined for the second consecutive month during February 2018 overall, but the markets were patchy, based on results contained in the latest edition of their New Home Sales report – a monthly survey of the largest volume home builders in the five largest states.

“The decline in new house sales during the first two months of 2018 is consistent with our expectation that residential building activity will move lower over the next 12 months.

“Tighter restrictions around investor lending and heavier obstacles to foreign investor participation are contributing to the weaker conditions in new dwelling construction.

“New house sales in NSW saw decent growth during February. There were several favourable changes made by the NSW government relating to First Home Buyers last year and these have been beneficial to the state’s housing industry.

“Our forecast is that new home sales will trend downwards during 2018 in line with new home building activity. We expect things to bottom out in late 2019 before modest growth resumes,” concluded HIA Senior Economist Shane Garrett.

Latest Survey – Why Home Prices Will Fall Further

The latest release of the Digital Finance Analytics Household Survey to end March 2018, helps to explain why we think home prices are set to fall further. We discussed four housing and property scenarios in a recent video blog.

But drawing on our 52,000 sample, from across Australia, today we will walk through the top-level survey findings, before later drilling into the segment specific data in later posts. You can read about our household segmentation models here. This analysis of course then feeds into our Property Imperative Report, which we publish twice each year as a summary of our research and analysis. The last edition – volume 9 – from 2017 is still available on request.

Read the transcript. or watch the video.

The first chart, which looks across our property segments, shows that both portfolio property investors (who hold multiple properties) and solo investors (who hold one, or perhaps two) intentions to transact are tanking, down 8% since December 2017. As we will see later, this is because credit is less available, capital growth has stalled, and in fact only the tax breaks remain as an incentive! This decline started in 2015, but is accelerating. Remember that 35% of mortgages are for investment purposes, so as this demand dissipates, the floor on prices starts to shatter.

Refinancing is up a little, thanks to the attractive discounts being offered by many lenders, and as we will see the prime driver is to reduce monthly repayments, as currently household finances are under pressure. We release the latest mortgage stress analysis in a few days.

First time buyers and those wanting to buy, are saving a little more in an attempt to access the market, and those planning to trade up are also still putting some funds aside, otherwise, there is little evidence of concerted attempts to save cash for property transactions.

Turning for demand for credit, we see is crashing, especially in the investment segments. There was a 12% fall in the solo property investor group and an amazing 27% fall in the portfolio investor segment. One of the clearest messages from the survey is how much lending standards just got tighter, with an average 20% drop in “borrowing power” compared with a few months ago. As a result many first time buyers and investors simply cannot get credit, because they cannot meet the tighter requirements. The outfall from the Royal Commission will simply exacerbate the situation. There is a strong link between home prices and credit supply, so this will put further downward pressure on property values.

Refinancing households are tending not now to seek to release additional capital from their properties, as part of a refinance deal. We also note a rise in those being forced to refinance from interest only loans to principal and interest loans, and our latest modelling still is tracking an estimated $100 billion problem.

We find that ever fewer households are expecting home prices to rise, this registered across the board – but the trajectory down is strongest among investors. No segment is more bullish on prices compared with last year. This falling trend is strongest in Sydney, but Melbourne appears to be following about 6 months later. Households in Perth and Hobart are more bullish, but only slightly, and this was not enough to prevent the general decline. Remember WA has seen prices slide in recent years.

Households use of mortgage brokers appears pretty consistent (even if the volume of transactions is falling). Those seeking to refinance are most likely to approach a broker, followed by first time buyers.

Next time we will look in more detail at the underlying drivers by segments. But current home prices appear to have no visible means of support – they are going to fall further.

Auction Activity High, But Clearance Lower

Corelogic says auction activity reaches its highest level not only over the year-to-date, but the highest volume of auctions ever recorded across the combined capital cities and Melbourne individually.

But the preliminary clearance rate is reported at 65.5% this week and will fall further, compared to 67.5% last week – which was subsequently revised down to 66.0%. Last year at the same time the result was 74.5%.

Something else to watch is the discounts to asking price, which we suspect is also rising, more data on this soon.

The pre- Easter week sees the number of homes taken to auction reach their highest level ever recorded, with a total of 3,967 auctions held across the combined capital cities exceeding the previous highest week on record over the week ending 30th November 2014 when 3,908 auctions were held.

The uplift in activity is what has historically been seen in the lead up to the Easter period slowdown, although compared to the pre-Easter week last year auction volumes were significantly lower than this week (3,517).

The weighted average preliminary clearance rate did shift slightly lower this week amid the higher activity, returning a 65.5 per cent success rate.

Across Melbourne, a total of 2,078 homes were taken to market across the city also making it a record busiest week in CoreLogic history; surpassing the previous record over the week ending 29th October 2017 when 1,983 auctions were held. The preliminary auction clearance rate fell however across the higher volumes, with 67 per cent of homes selling, down from the previous weeks 68.7 per cent.

A preliminary auction clearance rate of 66.2 per cent was recorded across Sydney this week, while volumes across the city reached a year-to-date high, with a total of 1,359 auctions held which was lower than what was seen over the pre-Easter week last year (1,436). Despite the increase in activity the preliminary clearance rate was second highest for the city this year.

Results across the smaller auction markets saw volumes increase across all remaining cities, however auction clearance rates returned varied results week-on-week.

Auction Results For Today

Domain have released their preliminary results for today, provided by APM.

Still lower than last year, using their standard method of calculation:

Brisbane cleared 49% of 137 scheduled auctions. Adelaide cleared 65% of 106 scheduled and Canberra 74% of 81 scheduled auctions.

Last week settled gain significantly lower, so expect the same again. And consider the gap between the number listed 3,143 and the number “reported auctions” 2,160.

You could easily argue the true picture is 1,484 (number sold) / 3,143 (number listed) giving a preliminary result of 47% clearance. Would that give a truer picture?

Either way you look at it, rates are down.

The Financial Market Earthquakes – The Property Imperative Weekly 24 March 2018

Today we examine the recent Financial Market Earthquakes and ask, are these indicators of more trouble ahead?

Welcome to the Property Imperative Weekly to 24^th March 2018. Watch the video or read the transcript.

In this week’s review of property and finance news we start with the recent market movements and consider the impact locally.

The Dow 30 has come back, slumping more than 1,100 points between Thursday and Friday, and ending the week in correction territory – meaning down more than 10% from its recent high.

The volatility index – the VIX which shows the perceived risks in the financial markets also rose, up 6.5% just yesterday to 24.8, not yet at the giddy heights it hit in February, but way higher than we have seen for a long time – so perceived risks are higher.

And the Aussie Dollar slipped against the US$ to below 77 cents from above 80, and it is likely to drift lower ahead, which may help our export trade, but will likely lead to higher costs for imports, which in turn will put pressure on inflation and the RBA to lift the cash rate. The local stock market was also down, significantly. Here is a plot of the S&P ASX 100 for the past year or so. We are back to levels last seen in October 2017. Expect more uncertainty ahead.

So, let’s look at the factors driving these market gyrations. First of course U.S. President Donald Trump’s signed an executive memorandum, imposing tariffs on up to $50 billion in Chinese imports and in response the Dow slumped more than 700 points on Thursday. There was a swift response from Beijing, who released a dossier of potential retaliation targets on 128 U.S. products. Targets include wine, fresh fruit, dried fruit and nuts, steel pipes, modified ethanol, and ginseng, all of which could see a 15% duty, while a 25% tariff could be imposed on U.S. pork and recycled aluminium goods. We also heard Australia’s exemptions from tariffs may only be temporary.

Some other factors also weighed on the market. Crude oil prices rose more than 5.5% this week as following an unexpected draw in U.S. crude supplies and rising geopolitical tensions in the middle east. Crude settled 2.5% higher on Friday after the Saudi Energy Minister said OPEC and non-OPEC members could extend production cuts into 2019 to reduce global oil inventories. Here is the plot of Brent Oil futures which tells the story.

Bitcoins promising rally faded again. Earlier Bitcoin rallied from a low of $7,240 to a high of $9175.20 thanks to easing fears that the G20 meeting Monday would encourage a crackdown on cryptocurrencies. Finance ministers and central bankers from the world’s 20 largest economies only called on regulators to “continue their monitoring of crypto-assets” and stopped short of any specific action to regulate cryptocurrencies. So Bitcoin rose 2% over the past seven days, Ripple XRP fell 8.93%and Ethereum fell 14.20%. Crypto currencies remain highly speculative. I am still working on my more detailed post, as the ground keeps shifting.

Gold prices enjoyed one of their best weeks in more than a month buoyed by a flight-to-safety as investors opted for a safe-haven thanks to the events we have discussed. However, the futures data shows many traders continued to slash their bullish bets on gold. So it may not go much higher. So there may be no relief here.

Then there was the Federal Reserve statement, which despite hiking rates by 0.25%, failed to add a fourth rate hike to its monetary policy projections and also scaled back its labour market expectations. Some argued that the Fed’s decision to raise its growth rate but keep its outlook on inflation relatively unchanged was dovish. Growth is expected to run at 3%, but core inflation is forecast for 2019 and 2020 at 2.10%. They did, however, signal a faster pace of monetary policy tightening, upping its outlook on rates for both 2019 and 2020. You can watch our separate video blog on this. The “dots” chart also shows more to come, up to 8 lifts over two years, which would take the Fed rate to above 3%. The supporting data shows the economy is running “hot” and inflation is expected to rise further. This will have global impact. The era of low interest rates in ending. The QE experiment is also over, but the debt legacy will last a generation.

All this will have a significant impact on rates in the financial markets, putting more pressure on borrowing companies in the US, and the costs of Government debt. US mortgage interest rates rose again, a precursor to higher rates down the track.

Moodys’ said this week, that the U.S.’ still relatively low personal savings rate questions how easily consumers will absorb recent and any forthcoming price hikes. Moreover, the recent slide by Moody’s industrial metals price index amid dollar exchange rate weakness hints of a levelling off of global business activity.

The flow on effect of rate rises is already hitting the local banks in Australia. To underscore that here is a plot of the A$ Bill/OIS Swap rate, a critical benchmark for bank funding. In fact, looking over the past month, the difference, or spread has grown by around 20 basis points, and is independent from any expectation of an RBA rate change. The BBSW is the reference point used to set interest rates on most business loans, and also flows through to personal lending rates and mortgages.

As a result, there is increasing margin pressure on the banks. In the round, you can assume a 10 basis point rise in the spread will translate to a one basis point loss of margin, unless banks reduce yields on deposit accounts, or lift mortgage rates. Individual banks ae placed differently, with ANZ most insulated, thanks to their recent capital initiatives, and Suncorp the most exposed.

In fact, Suncorp already announced that Variable Owner Occupier Principal and Interest rates will rise by 5 basis points. Variable Investor Principal and Interest rates will increase by 8 basis points, and Variable Interest Only rates increase go up by 12 basis points. In addition, their variable Small Business rates will increase by 15 basis points and their business Line of Credit rates will increase by 25 basis points. Expect more ahead from other lenders. The key takeaway is that funding costs in Australia are going up at a time when the RBA is stuck in neutral. It highlights how what happens with rates and in money markets overseas, and particularly in the US, can have repercussions here – repercussions that many are possibly unprepared for.

Locally, the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that home prices to December 2017 fell in Sydney over the past quarter, along with Darwin. Other centres saw a rise, but the rotation is in hand. Overall, the price index for residential properties for the weighted average of the eight capital cities rose 1.0% in the December quarter 2017. The index rose 5.0% through the year to the December quarter 2017.

The capital city residential property price indexes rose in Melbourne (+2.6%), Perth (+1.1%), Brisbane (+0.9%), Hobart (+3.9%), Canberra (+1.7%) and Adelaide (+0.6%) and fell in Sydney (-0.1%) and Darwin (-1.5%). You can watch our separate video on this, where we also covered in more detail the January 2018 mortgage default data from Standard & Poor’s. It increased to 1.30% from 1.07% in December. No area was exempt from the increase with loans in arrears by more than 30 days increasing in January in every state and territory. Western Australia remains the home of the nation’s highest arrears, where loans in arrears more than 30 days rose to 2.44% in January from 2.08% in December, reaching a new record high. Conversely, New South Wales continues to have the lowest arrears among the more populous states at 0.98% in January. Moody’s is now expecting a 10% correction in some home prices this year.

According to latest figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate increased to 5.6 per cent and the labour force participation rate increased by less than 0.1 percentage points to 65.7 per cent. The number of persons employed increased by 18,000 in February 2018. So no hints of any wage rises soon, as it is generally held that 5% unemployment would lead to higher wages – though even then, I am less convinced.

The latest final auction clearance results from CoreLogic, published last Thursday showed the final auction clearance rate across the combined capital cities rose to 66 per cent across a total of 3,136 auctions last week; making it the second busiest week for auctions this year, compared with 63.3 per cent the previous week, and still well down from 74.1 per cent a year ago. Although Melbourne recorded its busiest week for auctions so far this year with a total of 1,653 homes taken to auction, the final auction clearance rate across the city fell to 68.7 per cent, down from the 70.8 per cent over the week prior. In Sydney, the final auction clearance rate increased to 64.8 per cent last week, from 62.2 per cent the week prior. Across the smaller auction markets, clearance rates improved in Brisbane, Perth and Tasmania, while Adelaide and Canberra both returned a lower success rate over the week. They say Geelong was the best performing non-capital city region last week, with 86.1 per cent of the 56 auctions successful. However, the Gold Coast region was host to the highest number of auctions (60). This week they are expecting a high 3,689 planned auctions today, so we will see where the numbers end up. I am still digging into the clearance rate question, and should be able to post on this soon. But remember that number, 3,689, because the baseline seems to shift when the results arrive.

As interest rates rise, in a flat income environment, we expect the problems in the property and mortgage sector to show, which is why our forward default projections are higher ahead. We will update that data again at the end of the month. Household Financial Confidence also drifted lower again as we reported. It fell to 94.6 in February, down from 95.1 the previous month. This is in stark contrast to improved levels of business confidence as some have reported. Our latest video blog covered the results.

Finally, The Royal Commission of course took a lot of air time this week, and I did a separate piece on the outcomes yesterday, so I won’t repeat myself. But suffice it to say, we think the volume of unsuitable mortgage loans out there is clearly higher than the lenders want to admit. Mortgage Broking will also get a shake out as we discussed on the ABC this week. And that’s before they touch on the wealth management sector!

We think there are a broader range of challenges for bankers, and their customers, as I discussed at the Customer Owned Banking Association conference this week. There is a separate video available, in which you can hear about what the future of banking will look like and the importance of customer centricity. In short, more disruption ahead, but also significant opportunity, if you know where to look. I also make the point that ever more regulation is a poor substitute for the right cultural values. At the end of the day, a CEO’s overriding responsibility is to define the right cultural values for the organisation, and the major banks have been found wanting. A quest for profit at any cost will ultimately destroy a business if in the process it harms customers, and encourages fraud and deceit. You simply cannot assume banks will do the right thing, unless the underlying corporate values are set right. Remember Greenspans testimony after the GFC, when he said “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.”

Preliminary auction clearance rates soften

From CoreLogic.

Preliminary auction clearance rates soften as the number of auctions surges to the second busiest week so far this year.

There were 3,097 homes taken to auction across the combined capital cities this week, making it the second busiest week of the year so far, with preliminary results showing a 67.5 per cent success rate. In comparison, 1,764 auctions were held last week and the final clearance rate came in at 63.3 per cent. Over the same week last year, auction volumes were lower with 2,916 homes going under the hammer across the combined capital cities, although the clearance rate was a stronger 74.1 per cent.

In Melbourne, a preliminary auction clearance rate of 68.9 per cent was recorded across 1,656 auctions this week, down from 70.8 per cent across just 453 auctions last week. Over the same week last year, 1,441 homes were taken to auction across the city, returning a clearance rate of 77.0 per cent.

Sydney was host to 1,055 auctions this week, with preliminary results showing a 67.8 per cent success rate, up from 62.2 per cent across 974 auctions last week. This time last year, the clearance rate was a stronger 76.8 per cent across 1,001 auctions.

Excluding Tasmania, where all 3 reported auctions were successful, Adelaide recorded the highest preliminary clearance rate this week (69.7 per cent).

Looking at auction volumes, Perth was the only city to see a slight fall in the number of homes taken to auction this week, while all other cities increased week-on-week.

The Property Cracks Widen

Sydney home price falls are now featuring in the main stream media. Of course average price falls may not fully tell the story, as more expensive property is dropping faster, whilst demand for cheaper options remains strong.

Nine News ran a segment last night.

The cracks are beginning to show in the Sydney property market, with the inflated prices from six months ago dissipating.

In some suburbs, prices have fallen as much as 30 percent, as the median house price copped its largest knock since August 2008.

In the three months to December, the harbour city’s median house price fell 1.3 percent, tumbling a further 2.5 percent in the following three months to March, CoreLogic data shows.

It’s the steepest drop in a decade, with the average price of a home now priced at $880,743.

CoreLogic’s Kevin Brogan said the tide was slowly turning.

“I don’t think there’s any cause for panic,” he said.

“At the moment it’s trending towards being a buyer’s market, but I think what we’re seeing is quite a gradual adjustment to the market.”

Experts say a crackdown on investor loans, increased stock and the curbing of tax benefits has contributed.

Over the past fortnight, the auction clearance rate dropped to just 56.1 percent.

Compare that to this time last year, when 78 percent of homes were selling.

Yesterdays Daily Telegraph newspapers also painted a picture of gloom:

Auctions Results Flaccid Once Again

Domain has released their preliminary results for today.

Lower volumes and clearances compared with last year at this time. The preliminary results will drift lower as the full results come in. Last week was further down thanks to the long weekend in some states.

Brisbane cleared 56% of 93 scheduled, Adelaide cleared 71% of 50 scheduled and Canberra 57% of 81 scheduled.

Auction Clearances Up A Bit On Lower Volumes

From CoreLogic.

Capital city preliminary clearance rate rises to 67.3 per cent, with auction activity across the capitals significantly lower.

There were 1,721 auctions held across the combined capital cities this week, significantly lower than the 3,026 held last week, although higher than one year ago (1,473). The fall in auction volumes this week is due to the fact that four of the eight states and territories have a public holiday this coming Monday.

The preliminary clearance rate across the combined capital cities rose to 67.3 per cent this week, up from 63.6 per cent last week, although this will revise as more results are collected over the week. Over the same week last year, the clearance rate was recorded at 75.1 per cent.

The two largest auction markets, Melbourne and Sydney, saw their preliminary clearance rates rise, with Sydney at 66.6 per cent across 936 auctions and Melbourne at 72.2 per cent across 447 auctions, while the highest clearance rate was in Canberra where 77.6 per cent of auctions cleared over the week.

Looking at results by property type, units outperformed houses again this week with 70.0 per cent of units selling at auction, while 66.0 per cent of houses sold across the combined capital cities.