Spring selling season begins slowly across Australia

Australia’s spring selling season looks to have finally begun, although agents say the initial burst of new listings in early September has not continued at the same pace, meaning the many buyers still desperate for a home are likely still in for a tough run.

New listings have been up in nearly every capital city over the past month, aside from Melbourne and Canberra – but those cities have seen a flood of new listings since it was announced a week ago that in-person inspections were back on the table.

Data from Domain shows new listings surged by 58.7 per cent in Melbourne in the past week and 26.8 per cent in Canberra.

In Brisbane, which has not suffered the lockdowns of its southern counterparts, new listings remain perilously low for spring at the same time that buyer demand continues to operate at record levels.

Record prices are consequently being recorded, week after week, in suburbs across the city. In Cannon Hill in the city’s southeast, a three-bedroom home sold for a massive $1.370 million, setting a suburb record for a low-set home.

Auction numbers are set to increase in the coming weeks. Nationally, the preliminary figures show there are 1039 auctions scheduled across the capital cities for this Saturday but they’re set to be at 1510 in two weeks time as Melbourne begins recovering from its inspection hiatus, tripling its scheduled number of auctions.

Despite this, agents are reporting the usual spike of new activity in the spring market has, so far, been more of a steady stream that is unlikely to sate current buyer demand.

In Sydney, new property listings have increased by 23.3 per cent over the past month but they’re not going full steam ahead – over the past week, they’ve lifted by only 5.5 per cent.

Compared to this time last year, when Sydney was not three months into a lockdown, there is still less on the market and the rate of new listings does not seem to be gathering pace, said BresicWhitney head of sales and chief auctioneer Thomas McGlynn.

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“The first week of September was our best listing week since the start of lockdown. I felt it – there was a surge off the back of that – and there has been an increase in listings,” he said. “But that hasn’t gone on a run like it suggested it would. Listings are increasing but not by a huge amount.”

Buyers, however, were still very much there, he said.

“Although we aren’t seeing the increase in listings, we’ve got a massive increase in the number of people actively participating and bidding at auction,” he said. “That only says one thing: there’s still some growth.”

Belle Property Lane Cove agent James Bennett said the volume of stock for sale felt like half of what there would be in a regular spring market.

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“There was a couple of weeks where there were eight new listings a week but now it’s one or two,” he said. “It doesn’t feel like a normal spring – it’s more of a blended spring that has rolled on from winter – and remember our sales for winter were unusually strong.

“Demand from buyers is really good; there’s really good depth, there are a lot of buyers in certain price brackets. I think in a month we’ll really know whether there are a few vendors that are holding back.”

It’s a similar story in Melbourne, where agents said the market was taking off at a slower rate than it did last year.

Marshall White Stonnington director and auctioneer John Bongiorno said there had been a tsunami of buyers but just a trickle of new listings since spring began in Melbourne.

Fewer vendors were coming to the market, he said, even though one-on-one inspections are allowed again.

“I think people have been knocked around a little bit more compared to last year,” Mr Bongiorno said. “Having such a long lockdown has had a bigger impact on where people are at in terms of selling.”

Barry Plant Victoria director Mike McCarthy said there had been a 27 per cent increase in listings for the group over the past week, but that it had been a “fraction slower” than last year.

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The slower bounce, he said, was due to the fact people had bought homes online and sight-unseen, meaning those properties were not being held until the market opened up again.

Ray White Victoria and Tasmania chief executive Stephen Dullens said there had been a bounce in listings similar to those of the past two lockdowns, with vendors keen to get to market, although the fact so many buyers had continued to purchase during lockdown, sight-unseen, had lessened the pent-up demand.

“Two in every five sales during August were sight-unseen and I think what that did for our group is see vendors get their property online before the lockdown ended,” Mr Dullens said. “We would have seen a massive jump in listing numbers now if that hadn’t happened.”