Melbourne’s auction Super Saturday arrives - finally

The Melbourne weekend home auction market will host its traditional pre-Melbourne Cup Super-Saturday of auctions this weekend as sellers rush to the market to avoid a clash with the following weekend’s holiday that celebrates the Race That Stops A Nation.

This Saturday around 1200 homes will go under the hammer in Melbourne which will be well ahead of the 989 auctioned last weekends and the highest Saturday offering for nearly 6 months.

Although a surge in auctions listings will be welcomed by Melbourne’s hungry home buyers, this year’s Pre-Cup Super-Saturday auctions will be nearly 20 percent fewer  than last year’s 1479 and the lowest number since 2012 when 1053 were listed.

Melbourne’s inner south will take over from the west this weekend and host the highest number of auctions with 196. Next highest is the north east with 176, followed by the inner city 171, the west 169, the inner east 159, the outer east 126, the north 89 and the south east with 67 auctions listed.

Richmond will be Melbourne’s most popular auction suburb on Super Saturday with 21 followed by Reservoir 20, St Kilda 19, Glen Iris, Brighton and Cheltenham each with 17, Hawthorn 16 and Glen Waverley and East Bentleigh each with 15 auctions on Saturday.

Melbourne’s mid- spring home auction market continues to report remarkably consistent results with vendors currently enjoying the best October selling conditions on record.

Melbourne recorded a clearance rate of 79.0 percent last Saturday which was just below the 79.8 percent recorded the previous weekend but well above the 73.0 percent recorded over the same weekend last year.

Melbourne’s north and south suburban regions continue to produce boom-time results with the north east yet again the top performer last weekend with an 87.6 percent clearance rate. Next highest was the inner south with 84.3 percent followed by the north 84.3 percent, the outer east 80.9 percent, the south east 79.4 percent, the west 79.3 percent and the highest sales again with119, the inner east 75.8 percent and the inner city with a clearance rate 70.4 percent.

Recent strong auction activity in Melbourne is being fuelled by a resurgence in residential investors. Latest ABS data reports that lending to Victorian investors surged by 5.0 percent over August to $3.24bn to be 5.3 percent higher than that recorded over August last year.

Investor lending in Victoria over August accounted for 47.6 percent of all residential lending recorded in the state – the highest local market share by investors recorded since July 2015.

Rising prices, relatively attractive yields and tight vacancy rates will continue to attract investors to the robust Melbourne market   – again keeping upward pressure on already sharply rising prices.

Dr Andrew Wilson is Domain Group Chief Economist Twitter@DocAndrewWilson join on LinkedIn