Two-paced Sydney market on hold over Easter break

The Sydney home auction market will be on hold the weekend, with buyers and sellers distracted by the Easter holiday break.

Last weekend Sydney hosted its biggest auction day of the year so far,  with a typical pre-Easter Super Saturday flood of auctions. There were 911 homes listed to go under the hammer, well ahead of the 592 auctions conducted on the previous weekend but significantly below the 1128 auctioned during last year’s  pre-Easter weekend.

For the weekend just 49 auctions are listed in Sydney but will nonetheless be well ahead of the 34 homes auctioned at the Easter weekend last year.

Sydney’s upper north shore suburban region will host the highest number of auctions on Saturday with 10, followed by the west with nine, the lower north eight, the central coast five, the city and east and south each with four, the south-west three, the inner west and the northern beaches each with two, Canterbury Bankstown with one and the north-west and Blue Mountains have no auctions listed for the weekend.

Wentworth Point is the most popular suburbs in Sydney for auctions at the weekend with three, followed by Mosman, Epping, Seaforth, Beecroft and Bangor each with two auctions on Saturday.

Despite significant numbers of auctions Sydney produced another positive overall result for sellers last weekend. Sydney reported a clearance rate of 75.8 per cent, which was just below the 76.3 per cent recorded the previous weekend but again well below the boom-time 87.5 per cent recorded for the same weekend last year.

Last Saturday’s result was above the average weekend rate of 75.1 per cent recorded during the past seven Saturdays, and continues the sequence of remarkably consistent results characteristic of the 2016 market so far.

Sydney, however, remains clearly a two-paced market with inner-suburban, higher-priced regions continuing to produce boom-time results in sharp contrast to outer suburbs to the west where clearance rates remain considerably lower.

Data released this week by the ABS confirmed the findings of the recent Domain report, with Sydney house prices decreasing 2.1 per cent during the December quarter. Despite the fall the ABS also reported that Sydney house prices increased a remarkable 15.2 per cent in 2015 – higher again than the previous year’s annual result of 12.8 per cent.

Although market conditions remain in favour of sellers overall, annual prices growth in Sydney this year is likely to be flat with modest increases of up to 2 per cent at best. The potential for house price growth will be subdued by continuing low incomes growth and likely flat interest rate outcomes for the foreseeable future.

Dr Andrew Wilson is Domain Group’s chief economist

Twitter @DocAndrewWilson 

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