A reduction in auction volumes and strong results in Sydney has helped resulted in a slight week-on-week increase for Australia’s national auction clearance rate.

Preliminary figures from CoreLogic RP Data currently have the national clearance rate at 68.9% from last week’s 1,824 auctions.

The previous week saw the national clearance rate finalise at 67.7% from 2,230 auctions, while the corresponding week 12 months ago saw a clearance rate of 77.5% recorded from 2,232 auctions.

Sydney was easily the strongest performing market last week, with the harbour city returning a preliminary clearance rate of 75.6% from its total of 614 auctions.

That result is an improvement on the previous week’s result of 71.8%, however it is still significantly lower than the clearance rat of 85% recorded from 885 auctions one year ago.

Ryde was Sydney’s strongest performing sub region, with its preliminary clearance rate coming in at 91.3%.

While it could not match Sydney’s clearance rate last week, Melbourne was the busiest market with 859 homes going under the hammer.

The preliminary clearance rate in the Victorian capital currently sits at 70.6%, slightly down from the 73.2% recorded from 1,150 auctions last week.

The busiest Melbourne sub-region last week was the Inner region, with 160 auctions and a preliminary clearance rate of 76.3% recorded, while the West region currently holds the highest clearance rate at 80.3%.

After holding 195 auctions a fortnight ago, the highest volume count in seven weeks, Brisbane held 153 auctions last week.

Last week’s preliminary clearance rate currently sits at 51.2%, up from the previous week’s 41.2%.

Adelaide also looks to have seen an increase in its clearance rate, with the preliminary result in the South Australian capital at 67.9% compared to the previous week’s 59.8%.

Adelaide held 100 auctions last week compared to 94 over the previous week.

Canberra’s preliminary clearance rate was 58.6% last week, up from 54.3% over the previous week.

Auction volumes were relatively steady in Canberra over the week with 49 held last week compared to 50 the week before.

Across Perth, 41 auctions were held this week with 20% selling, based on the 15 reported results.

In Tasmania eight auctions were held over the week and of the seven reported results, two sales have been recorded.