Weekly Market Update 24th September, 2018
By | 24th Sep 18

Melbourne has experienced its first Super Saturday style weekend with a bigger volume of auctions and a clearance rate of 57 per cent from 801 auctions. There are consistently more opportunities for buyers now. Our client had a great result with a two-bedroom apartment in Ida Street, North Fitzroy which sold for $600,000 after it has been purchased through our Group Block purchases only two years ago for $393,000. Another solid result was a property with a “WOW” factor in Beaumaris, which backed onto a golf course with four bidders pushing the price to $1,860,000, which was $110,000 over reserve.

The Melbourne market has definitely slowed at the higher end around the $1 to $3 million dollar mark, particularly in the eastern suburbs which has been dominated by Chinese buyers in the last five to six years. With the increased taxes now paid by Chinese buyers and the tougher money controls, Chinese buyers have dropped off as they spent $8.6 billion dollars less in the last financial year compared to the previous year. This has had a major impact on the higher end family home market in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

The Block properties have performed solidly over the last seven years that we have been involved and we saw Sticks and Wombats property being resold for $2,830,000 after it has been purchased only ten months ago for $2,650,000. We were the under bidders at The Block auction last year for our investor client from Toorak. The seller had also bought Georgia and Ronnie’s property and didn’t settle on that property and had to nominate someone else on to the contract but they settled on this one and then resold it straight away.  It was an interesting situation and we are unsure whether they could not obtain the finance or just decided the purchase was not right for them.