Melbourne's auction Super Saturday arrives - finally

The Melbourne weekend home auction market will host its traditional pre-Melbourne Cup Super Saturday of auctions 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 about 1200 homes will go under the hammer in Melbourne, well ahead of the 989 auctioned last weekend and the highest Saturday offering for nearly six months.

Although a surge in auction listings will be welcomed by Melbourne’s hungry home buyers, this year’s pre-Cup Super Saturday auctions will be nearly 20 per cent 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.

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

Melbourne recorded a clearance rate of 79 per cent last Saturday, which was just below the 79.8 per cent recorded the previous weekend but well above the 73 per cent 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 per cent clearance rate. Next highest was the inner south with 84.3 per cent followed by the north 84.3 per cent, the outer east 80.9 per cent, the south-east 79.4 per cent, the west 79.3 per cent and the highest sales again with 119, the inner east 75.8 per cent and the inner city with a clearance rate 70.4 per cent.

Recent strong auction activity in Melbourne is being fuelled by a resurgence in residential investors. Latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data reports that lending to Victorian investors surged by 5 per cent over August to $3.24 billion to be 5.3 per cent higher than that recorded over August last year.

Investor lending in Victoria over August accounted for 47.6 per cent 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.

Andrew Wilson is Domain Group’s chief economist

Twitter @DocAndrewWilson