With the RBA giving indications this week of some interest rate “sweet loving” during 2016 – like a Terminator T-800 back from the past and ready to remake the future – the Sydney Auction market’s eyeballs regained some of their usual ‘red glow’ yesterday with the number of listed auctions at 215 – up an Arnie like 467% on last week’s anemic 46 (though still down 28% on 297 in 2015 and 298 in 2014).

But instead of “Are you Sarah Conner”, it was “Sorry, it was Sold Prior” falling from the lips of agents with 19% of the listed Auctions (up from 13% last week) dispatched before Saturday festivities.

Another notable feature of the week was the evaporation of the mid summer shower of “Passed in Properties” of last week, which suggests that agents have been working hard on seller “expectations” and convincing the more delusional sellers to steer clear of auctions and instead give “Expressions of Interest Invited” a go and try to catch a bright eyed buyer before they sniff the breeze for too long.

The Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Property Monitors reports that agents managed to get about 80% of the results (171 out of 215) strapped to the legs of pigeons by late Saturday afternoon which is an improvement on the 70% for this weekend last year, so a “much improved” stamp for that.

Note:   In order to encourage agents to help APM collate the most complete stats each Saturday night, the Glass Pyramid is presenting all results as a percentage of the number of Auctions Listed.  The reason for this is that agents are more likely to report ‘good results’ sooner and that can tilt the figures when results are presented as a % of what agents have bothered to report on Saturday afternoon.

Anyhow – onto the good stuff!

There are two tables this week.  The first contains yesterday’s APM fitter and fatter report sliced and diced.  The second contains a summary of the last few weeks.

A few comments on yesterday:

• Pre-Action Panic – Panic levels dropped from 28% to 23% of Listed Auctions.  19% were sold prior and only 4% withdrawn (down from 15% the week before).  As noted above it appears that agents were doling out large mugs of “Reality Vintage 2016” to their clients.
• Hammer Time – Hammer time made a cyborg like leap up to 33% from last weeks 22% which suggest the “Reality Vintage 2016” dosages extended to the setting of reserves as well.   Auction goers love a bit of hammer time action and this week delivered!
• Seller Sadness – at a low 12% of listed auctions (9% passed in) Seller Sadness (down from a chunky 28%) also shows signs of the invigorating effects of a slurp of “Reality Vintage 2016” or perhaps agents simply holding the more optimistically priced stock until the mood of the market in 2016 becomes clearer.

Table 1 – Saturday 6 February 2016

Table 2 – Summary of recent results.