Sydney auction numbers rise, but listings reduce

Property listings across Sydney are lower than last year, with the recent rush to the red hot auction market helping clear the decks.

There have been around 8000 new listings over the past month, with total Sydney offerings currently at around 19,000. 

Despite less population, Melbourne and Perth have more properties on sale as stock levels in Sydney are 1.5% lower than a year ago, according to CoreLogic RP Data.

A pre-spring spring listings spurt showed up in higher than usual auction volumes, but then seemingly prompted a dip in the auction success rate. Sydney’s clearance rate was down from 77.3% to 76.2% last week. 

Around 3700 Saturday onsite auctions were marketed across Sydney during August, which include 800 tomorrow.

In August 2014 the Saturday numbers were around 2250 auctions, a 65% jump in weekend onsite activity year on year.

There was also another five Saturday August in 2013 when just 2000 auctions were held.

Auctions are increasingly a popular way of selling a residential property, new research from CoreLogic suggests.

Over the last financial year some 25% of all properties advertised for sale were taken to auction across Australia’s capital cities, with Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra leading the way.

There were 380,000 dwellings advertised for sale across Australia’s capital cities over the 2014/2015 financial year, of which 84,000 were marketed as auction sales.

The proportion of auction sales has been rising since the 2008/2009 financial year when auctions comprised 16% of all dwellings listed for sale.

CoreLogic RP Data research director Tim Lawless said the rise in the proportion of residential properties taken to auction should come as no surprise given market demand has been high and buyers are highly competitive.

Melbourne is still the city where auctions are the most popular method with some 39% of all Melbourne's residential property listings taken to auction.

Sydney sits not far behind at 38%.

Queens Park tops the list with 59 out of 60 house listings being taken to auction over the period under analysis. 

Queens Park has just the one weekend scheduled auction with Belle agent Edward Brown.

Around $2.1 million is being sought for the freestanding two bedroom property at 140 Denison Street.

"It is being offered to the market for the first time in over four decades," Edward Brown said.

Sydney's busiest auction suburb tomorrow is Liverpool followed by Blacktown and Surry Hills.

Liverpool's auction including four newly constructed homes on Apex Street through Darren Smith, Community First Liverpool.

This article was first published in The Daily Telegraph