Weekly Market Update - June 13, 2019
By | 12th Jun 19

What to look for inspecting property

Melbourne’s property market had a breather with a quieter Auction weekend due to the Queen’s Birthday long weekend as there were only 147 Auctions. The clearance rate continued to be a consistent rate at 63%, although I have never really encouraged vendors to sell on long weekends because there are large number of buyers away and there were quite a few auctions that saw only one bidder.  We were delighted that our client was able to take advantage of that at an auction at Fairway Close at Safety Beach. They purchased it for $702,500 after it was passed in well below the top of the range which was $745,000. The strongest two results saw four bidders at a townhouse in Schofield Street, Moorabbin which had four bidders and sold for $1,300,000, $50,000 above reserve. The other most competitive result was a two bedroom period style home in Leander Street, Footscray where four bidders pushed it to $713,00, $33,000 above reserve.

 

Small business owners confidence is booming in the wake of last month’s federal election. New surveys show that over 50% of small businesses were optimistic about the future compared to 19% before the election results. There are less vendors using the auction selling method as their sales strategy at the moment. The number of homes taken to auction to date this year has decreased by 36% compared to last year.

 

Over the last few years, many owners have joined forces with their neighbours to secure great pay days by selling together to a developer. Eight adjoining Box Hill owners sold their villa units for a combined 14.1 million price in Shipley Street on 2061sqm of land. They were able to sell to a local Chinese developer which represented a return of almost $1,800,000 per villa unit which is well above market value.

 

In some more positive news for the property market, the RBA as expected has reduced interest rates by 0.25%. It’s the first time there has been a rate reduction since 2016. It was disappointing to see that ANZ and Westpac didn’t pass on the rate cut in full, passing on 0.18% and 0.2% respectively. Low interest rates always stimulates more demand in Melbourne’s property market and it looks like there could be another rate cut to come in the next few months.