The prospect of another interest rate rise on Melbourne Cup day has shaken buyers’ confidence, sending auction clearance rates to their lowest level in seven months, data from CoreLogic shows.
Preliminary results show 68.5 per cent of the reported auctions across the combined capital cities were successful, which is 2.3 percentage points lower than the previous week and weaker than the average for this time of the year.
It comes as the number of homes taken to auction soared to 3383, which is the largest volume since the week before Easter last year.
Tim Lawless, CoreLogic research director, said such a large number of auctions was always going to test the depth of buyer demand. “Basically, it has not passed the test as shown by the lower clearance rates, which lines up with renewed speculation that interest rates are about to go higher once again,” he said.
And as reported in the AFR, a build-up in home listings and worsening affordability slashed the rate of house price growth by a third to 1.9 per cent across the combined capital cities during the September quarter, a new report from Domain shows.
Nicola Powell, Domain’s chief of research and economics, said the pace of price increases would moderate further amid rising supply, but the prospect of another interest rate increase was unlikely to halt the broader upswing and reverse the earlier gains. We will see!
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