Australia’s peak property season has opened slowly, with its first weekend featuring low stock and subdued auction success rates outside Sydney and Melbourne.<\/p>\n
Capital cities hosted 1462 auctions in the first week of spring, more than 30% down on the figure for a year earlier.<\/p>\n
The combined preliminary clearance rate hit 52.7%, just 0.4 percentage points above the winter average, according to data from Cotality.<\/p>\n
But Cotality research director Tim Lawless said he expected activity to build during September.<\/p>\n
“Auction activity is set to ramp up over the coming weeks, rising to around 1640 next week and 1900 the week after,” he said.<\/p>\n
Sydney and Melbourne show some strength<\/p>\n
Despite an overall slow weekend nationally, there were some green shoots in the market. Sydney’s preliminary auction clearance rate hit 57.7%, an 18-week high, while Melbourne recorded a preliminary rate of 58.2%.<\/p>\n
Clearance rates are seen as a strong leading indicator for property prices, which have been falling since a national market peak in March.<\/p>\n
An auction success rate of below 60% typically points to lower home prices.<\/p>\n
Clearance rates were lower in the smaller capitals, with Brisbane recording successful sales in just 24.8% of auctions, its second-weakest result of the year.<\/p>\n
Rate rises weigh on the spring market<\/p>\n
The subdued start to spring comes after a series of interest rate rises and mid-year tax changes that targeted property investors.<\/p>\n
The government in June passed sweeping changes to capital gains taxes<\/a>, while also rolling back negative gearing<\/a> incentives for existing properties.<\/p>\n Economists are forecasting another interest rate hike from the Reserve Bank of Australia<\/a> before the end of 2026, which could trigger further price falls.<\/p>\n National prices are down 3.6 per cent since March, according to Cotality, while in Sydney home prices are 7.1 per cent below their peak.<\/p>\n CommBank economists last week revised their outlook on the property market, saying they now expect national dwelling prices to fall around 9% from their peak this cycle<\/a>. They also expect the Reserve Bank to raise the cash rate by another 0.25 percentage points to 4.60% in November<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s peak property season has opened slowly, with its first weekend featuring low stock and subdued auction success…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4567,2077,152,1310,247],"class_list":["post-90107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sydney","tag-aap","tag-economy","tag-news","tag-property","tag-sydney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}