Strong year-end for auctions

Auction markets across Australia's capital cities witnessed a substantial jump in clearance rates during the last quarter of 2019, figures from CoreLogic show.

Over the three months to December 2019, the combined capital cities' clearance rate came in at 70.3% for 26,923 auctions, up from the 69.9% success rate from 16,730 auctions during the previous quarter. Only Melbourne and Tasmania registered a lower success rate from the preceding quarter.

On a yearly basis, the recent auction clearance rate is significantly higher than the 43.6% recorded in 2018.

Amongst non-capital city markets, clearance rates have increased across three of the five regions during the quarter, with the Geelong region returning the highest success rate at 62.8%. The busiest non-capital city market was the Gold Coast, where 634 auctions took place.

"As prices in Sydney and Melbourne rose 6.2% and 6.1%, respectively, in the December quarter, a corresponding increase in auction market activity is expected. Vendors have been responsive to higher prices, with auction volumes up by 4.0% year on year," said Eliza Owen, head of residential research at CoreLogic.

Over the quarter, Melbourne hosted the highest number of auctions at 12,870, followed by Sydney's 9,546. Within Melbourne, the busiest suburb was Reservoir. The table below shows the busiest suburbs in each capital city:

Zooming in to Melbourne's sub-regions, auction activity was strong across the board, with eight of the sub-regions hosting at least 1,000 auctions. The city's Inner region had the highest auction volume at 2,223, followed by Inner-South's 1,946. All regions managed to record a clearance rate above 70%.

In Sydney, the auction volume rose across all 15 sub-regions, with North Sydney and Hornsby recording the most auctions. However, only 12 of the sub-regions recorded a clearance rate above 65%.

The table below shows how each capital-city auction market performed during the quarter: