One of the ‘mysteries’ of Easter in Sydney is whether the residential auction market will rise from the depths of chocolate narcosis and again bring joy to the many monitoring and depending on its wraithy bubble-like form.

This week the Sydney auction market swirled back from the Easter camping grounds and passed through and over the suburbs of Sydney in a way that will bring a smile to the Household Debt bubble blowers at the “independent” Reserve Bank of Australia and the “independent” Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and also in government (ScoMo and Malcolm).

A reasonable volume – 539 auctions scheduled

A solid clearance rate – 51% of scheduled auctions

A stonking fat median – $1,220,000 – up almost $500,000 on 2013. 

As a special new feature from the Glass Pyramid’s analytical “sweat shop” staffed by former PhD candidates in advanced computational astrology, rescued from late shifts at dodgy Sydney convenience stores, some comment will be made on all auctions scheduled this week as reported by realestate.com.au 

The Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Property Monitors report records that agents reported 76% of the 539 auctions listed for Saturday – which is a typical performance.   All that chocolate that blocked the fax machines last week has been removed.

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’s  results pdf sliced and diced.  The second contains a summary of the last 13 weeks.

A few comments on yesterday:

• As we are still in the shifting chronological sands of Easter it is difficult to make comparisons with previous years.  Though those who are keen and make the attempt will probably conclude that volumes in 2016 are down at least 20% on 2015 and 2014 but still well up on 2013.   While prices in 2016 remain as firm as an auctioneer’s gavel swing.
• Pre-Action Panic – returned to normal with 27% (143) of listed auction selling before the big day.
• Hammer Time – firmed to 31% with  165 of the listed auctions being resolved by sundown.
• Seller Sadness – rose back to 10% but that is a fairly beige like number and little to be excited about.

Realestate.com.au 

Each week Realestate.com.au publishes auctions results (click here) compiled by the good folk at Core Logic RP .  The difference between these results and the SMH/APM results is that they include all auctions during the week, whereas the SMH/APM results are for auctions listed just on the Saturday.  This means that the realestate.com.au number of scheduled auctions is usually higher.

Click on the link to read all the details in their natural habitat but the key “Auction Action” metrics are:

• Number of Scheduled Auctions:     648 versus 539 on SMH/APM
• % of results reported:     81%  (525 of 648)
• Pre-Action Panic:             27% of the scheduled auctions did not reach auction
• Hammer Time:                  36% of the scheduled auctions were sold at or after hammer
• Seller Sadness:                  18% were passed in
• The metrics are reasonably consistent with the SMP/APM results having regard to the differences in reporting rates.

Table 1 – Saturday 2 April 2016

Table 2 – Summary of recent results.