Melbourne home auction remains encouraging for sellers

The strength of Melbourne’s early season home auction market continues to encourage sellers with the best results for this time of the year since 2010.

This weekend, 883 auctions are scheduled, which is nearly double the 462 listed last Saturday and similar to the 906 conducted over the same weekend last year.

The market will also feature another sharp rise this weekend in the number and proportion of inner suburban properties listed to go under the hammer.  

Melbourne’s inner city suburban region will host the most number of auctions this weekend with 146 closely followed by the west with 145, the inner south 140, the north east and the inner east each with 118, the outer east 102, the north 77 and the south east with 37 auctions listed on Saturday.

Richmond in the inner city will host the most auctions of any Melbourne suburb this weekend with 22.  Next highest is Reservoir 16, followed by Bentleigh 15, East Bentleigh, Brighton and Kew each with 13 and Preston with 12 auctions scheduled.

The surge in auction numbers this weekend will present the local market with clearly its biggest test of the year. 

The Melbourne home auction market has made an encouraging start to the year so far with clearance rates over the past two weekends the highest recorded by the local market since September last year.

Melbourne reported a clearance rate of 75 per cent last Saturday which was below the previous weekend’s 79.2 per cent but higher than the 73.9 per cent recorded over the same weekend last year.

The Melbourne housing market has begun the year with solid confidence from buyers and sellers. Latest ABS home lending data confirms that the local market ended 2015 on an overall positive note providing a robust platform for growth evidenced so far this year.

The appetite for residential investment in Melbourne remains resilient with loans for this group in Victoria increasing by 12.5 per cent over December to $3.57 billion. This was the second consecutive monthly increase of investor finance and follows four months of falls impacted by higher interest rates directed to this group by the financial regulator last July.

Andrew Wilson is Domain Group’s chief economist

Twitter @DocAndrewWilson