The combined capital cities returned a preliminary auction clearance rate of 69.4 per cent this week, marking the 21st consecutive week where the clearance rate has held below 70 per cent. The trend towards softer auction market conditions has been led by the Sydney market where the final auction clearance rate has remained below 65% since the first week of October.
Auction volumes were similar week-on-week, with 2,471 properties taken to auction, compared to 2,525 last week. This time last year, 2,680 homes were taken to auction and a clearance rate of 78.1 per cent was recorded. Tasmania, the smallest auction market, recorded the highest preliminary clearance rate with 80.0 per cent of the 5 reported auctions recording a successful result, followed by Melbourne with a preliminary clearance rate of 73.3 per cent across 1,030 results.
