Weekly Market Update - February 24, 2019
By | 25th Feb 19

What the experts are saying about the clearance rates

There seems to be more confidence in Melbourne’s property market place as the clearance rates have been slowly improving this year compared to where they have left off last year.  Even though there was a large volume of over 1,000 auctions on the first super Saturday auction weekend of the year, the clearance rate was a solid 53% from 816 reported auctions and there were also quite a few unreported auctions.  

The clearance rate has improved from last year where it was hovering around the 45% mark.  The strongest segment of the market is definitely the First Home Buyer segment where there were a number of strong auction results.  A villa unit in Florence Road, Surrey Hills and one of our Vendor Advocacy apartments in Kellett Street, Northcote both had three First Home Buyers bidding strongly.  The First Home Buyers end of the market is performing as solid as ever.

Though the performance of the apartment market in Melbourne continues to be patchy. A one bedroom apartment in Ellesmere Road Prahran was bought by the current owner for $450,000 in 2012 and after an auction campaign, the property is now on as a private sale asking $389,000. The oversupply of new apartments in Melbourne has impacted apartments like this in the prime Prahran location. 

Many developers are abandoning development projects due to the changing market conditions. There have been a number of development sites which developers are just sitting on now or have sold. We saw a developer make a massive loss of $1,275,000, selling two houses which were side by side on Dandenong Road, Prahran. They decided to sell at a big loss rather than go ahead and take the big risk of doing the project.