More good news for Melbourne home sellers

The Melbourne early-season home auction market continues to gather momentum with another surge in listings this weekend offering more choice for buyers.

Well over 450 homes will be offered for sale by auction on Saturday which will be predictably well ahead of last weekend’s 192 listings and similar to the 466 auctioned over the same weekend last year.

The west suburban region will again clearly host the most number of auctions with 113 followed by the outer east with 69, and inner south 63, the south east  51, the north east 48, the inner city 45, the north 43 and the inner east with 26 auctions listed on Saturday.

The most popular suburb for auctions this weekend in Melbourne is St Albans with 11 followed by Cheltenham with 8, Brunswick 7 and a number of suburbs with 6 auctions scheduled including Hopper Crossing, Werribee, St Kilda, Frankston South and Blackburn.

Melbourne’s February home auction market got off to a hot start last weekend as buyers pounced on the weekends significantly higher listing numbers.

Melbourne reported a strong clearance rate of 78.5 per cent last Saturday which was well ahead of the 70.0 percent recorded the previous weekend from small numbers but similar to the 79.2 per cent reported over the same Saturday last year.

The local market has started off 2017 positively with results so far similar to those recorded through December 2016 when clearance rates averaged nearly 80.0 per cent despite the usual end of year surge in listings.

Regional auction results last weekend also had a familiar look with the strong performers of last year continuing to record exceptional clearance rates for sellers. The north east came in with a perfect score of 100 per cent followed by the outer east 88.2 per cent, the south east 84.2 per cent, the north 81.8 per cent, the west 76.9 per cent and the highest number of sales at 30, the inner east 71.4 per cent, the inner south 69.2 per cent and the inner city with a weekend clearance rate of 66.7 per cent.

The Reserve Bank met for the first time this year this week to decide the level of official interest rates for February.  The Bank as expected decided to leave rates on hold for the fifth consecutive month at the record low 1.5 per cent.

The chances of a near-term cut by the Bank however remain unless the economy improves.  Recent economic data remains underwhelming with the national jobless rate rising to 5.8 percent over December – the highest result for the year and retail sales falling over December.

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