More than 1130 homes scheduled for Super Saturday auctions, as vendors rush to sell

While most of Sydney is winding down on Saturday morning, auctioneer Will Hampson will be gearing up for one of his busiest days of work ever.

Mr Hampson, of My Auctioneer, will start his day off early in Sydney’s inner west and won’t stop until after his last auction at 6.30pm, as a record number of homeowners rush to sell their properties before the Easter long weekend. 

He will then pick up the gavel and do it all again on Sunday, due to the considerable volume of properties to be sold. By the end of the weekend Mr Hampson will have also auctioned homes in the north shore, the northern beaches and south Sydney.

Almost 1140 homes were scheduled to go under the hammer this Super Saturday – just breaking the March 2015 record high of 1128 properties – although more than 100 of these had sold in the lead up to the weekend.

“They’re big numbers especially for this time of year,” Mr Hampson said. “People are wanting to secure a sale before the market starts cooling down for winter.

“Over the first quarter we’ve had clearance rates above 80 per cent – the question is if this volume will test the market – still I think a lot of inner suburbs are going to see a good strong clearance rate.”

In the inner west suburb of Leichhardt, 14 properties were originally scheduled for auction on Saturday, but demand had been so strong, eight sold beforehand and just six homes were left.

Agent Simon Pilcher of Pilcher Residential, who sold two Leichhardt properties prior to auction this week, said a wave of frustrated buyers were willing to pay a premium to secure a property before it went to auction.

Another agent in the area, James Price of Hudson McHugh, said auction numbers were so high because vendors wanted to take advantage of the strong clearance rates and the “frenzy” of demand from buyers desperate to get into the market.

“People have run out of patience, people are exhausted of looking for properties and missing out,” he said. “Usually we only see two or three auctions in Leichhardt of a Saturday – to have six shows that there’s quite a rush to the market.”

Domain Group chief economist Andrew Wilson said the rush to market was a result of buyers wanting to sell before the double whammy of the school holidays and the Easter long weekend, and a desire to sell before a possible interest rate rise.

The 1136 scheduled auctions for Saturday was significantly more than the 523 auctions scheduled for the same weekend last year, and about 24 per cent more than the 911 auction scheduled for the pre-Easter weekend in March last year, according to Domain Group Data.

Apart from setting a new record for the number of auctions scheduled, Dr Wilson believed this Super Saturday could come close to setting a record for the number of properties and the value of properties sold on one auction day.