Australia’s capital city auction market saw a slight uptick in its clearance rate last week, with figures from CoreLogic RP Data showing preliminary clearance rate of 78% last week, up from the 77.3% seen the previous week.

Predictably, Sydney and Melbourne led the way, with Sydney recording the highest clearance rate and Melbourne the highest number of auction results.

Sydney has so far recorded a preliminary clearance rate of 83.5% across 747 results for the week, which so far is an increase on the final rate of 82.4% from the previous week.

While Sydney saw a week on week increase for its clearance rate, there is some speculation the city’s appetite for auctions is starting to cool as rates continue to slow since May.

“In May Sydney reached a clearance rate of 89%, but it has tracked backwards since. This is not a one off scenario, it's a clear trend,” Domain Group senior economist Andrew Wilson told The Australian Financial Review.

“I think there is a clear sense that sellers expectations on price might have overreached.”

The strongest sub-region performance across Sydney for the week was the Ryde region, with 90.6% of the reported results clearing at auction.

Melbourne saw a national high of 824 auction results, but had a slight drop in its clearance rate, with a preliminary rate of 78.5% being recorded compared to the previous week’s 79.3%.

For the year so far, Melbourne’s weekly auction clearance rate has been, on average, 10.6% higher than over the comparable week one year ago.

Across Melbourne’s individual sub-regions, the strongest preliminary clearance rate this week was across the North East region at 85.8%, followed closely by the Inner East region where the preliminary clearance rate was 85%.

Brisbane saw a slight decrease in its clearance rate, with a preliminary result of 51.1% recorded compared to the previous week’s 52.2%.

The Queensland capital did have an increase in the number of auctions held though, up to 140 from 128 over the previous week.

Adelaide and Canberra performed strongly over the week, recording preliminary clearance rates of 70.8% and 81.3% respectively.

Perth returned a preliminary clearance rate of 57.1%, up from 38.9% over the previous week, while there were 22 auctions across Tasmania this week, with 10 successful results out of the 20 reported.