Real estate agents report seeing 'more zing' from buyers at weekend auctions

Real estate agents reported stepped-up buyer enthusiasm for inner-suburban properties at the weekend as bidders turned out in reasonable numbers for about half of the city’s auctions.

In Richmond, the bids flowed easily for an extended double-fronted timber house on 300 square metres at 124 Gwynne Street. The auction attracted 70 onlookers, mainly couples in their 20s and 30s.

Biggin & Scott auctioneer Russell Cambridge said the property, quoted at $1.4 million to $1.525 million, was priced in the same range as single-fronted cottages in the area and represented “damn good buying”. He quickly landed a $1.35 million opening bid.

A couple cradling a baby then stepped into the ring and pushed up the price in $5000 and $2500 increments before the home reached an on-the-market $1,482,500. At this point, the first bidder lobbed a series of rapid-fire bids and won the keys for $1.53 million.

Cambridge said he was seeing “more zing” from buyers and his company’s Richmond and Abbotsford office had secured 15 sales in the past three weeks.

Open-house inspection numbers and auction turn-outs are on the rise in selected suburbs.

The city’s auction clearance rate is heading north, too, jumping to 55 per cent this weekend (from 203 reported auctions). The result was 18 points up on last weekend’s finalised 36.6 per cent from a smaller sample of 95 auctions.

A year ago, the auction success rate was 68 per cent.

There were no auctions for $3 million-plus homes on Saturday but a raft of premium properties will go under the hammer in March.

Among the pricier sales reported at the weekend was a three-bedroom period house at 67 Waterloo Crescent, St Kilda, which fetched $2,065,000 through McGrath.

Meanwhile, a townhouse at 3/4 Reserve Road, Beaumaris, sold for $1.71 million through Buxton.

Properties priced below the median price for their suburb are prompting the hottest bidding duels.

At the weekend, these homes were especially targeted by first-home buyers while investors continued to hold fire.

A Kew house, in need of considerable TLC but sitting on 400 square metres, drew three bidders and sold for $1.05 million. The bidding for 93 Pakington Street began at $900,000 and quickly rose to $1 million before a final $46,000 knockout offer took the Nelson Alexander-listed home almost $50,000 past its reserve.

But there were no takers for a spacious two-bedroom, 1950s-style unit at 5/228 Nicholson Street, Abbotsford. Peter Markovic Real Estate’s Paul Markovic passed in the apartment on a $500,000 vendor bid after none of the six attendees at the auction put in a bid.

Markovic said first-home buyers had shown more interest in the unit than investors.

“Sometimes people like to play cloak-and-dagger games and come back later,” he said. “I’m confident it will sell within the ($500,000 to $550,000) range.”

Agents targeting $1 million to $5 million sales say buyers are shrugging off negative commentary about the state of the housing market and are displaying a greater preparedness to make decisions. But the real litmus test for the market won’t come until the weekly auction count exceeds 500 or 600 in the next month or so.

Jellis Craig director Alastair Craig said buyers looking for a principal home weren’t overly fretting about house-price trends and were more prepared to compete for the properties they wanted.

“No one knows where the top of the market is going to finish up or where the bottom is going to be,” he said. “If you are buying your principal place of residence and it is in the position you like and it is what you like, you go for it.”

Jellis Craig, Marshall White, Buxton and other multi-office agents started campaigns on the weekend for a slew of March auctions, but the inquiry rate from buyers and open-house attendances were variable.

“Boroondara seemed to be very strong – we had some good inquiry,” Craig said. “But when we came over to South Yarra and Armadale, there were probably half the numbers that we had in Boroondara.

“But there is a spring in the step of the market. People are willing to have a crack if they see something they like.

“If you look at real estate prices over the 100-year period, basically it has always doubled every 10 years. People forget that we had probably 70 per cent growth in the five years to 2017. If it has come back by 10 per cent or 15 per cent, the market is really just making a small correction.

“I don’t think it will be a year of growth, but certainly things have started to stabilise.”