Finally the very warm late summer and autumn in Sydney (proudly brought to us by carbon based industrialization) is being softened by a few cooler days.

While it is not so chilly that agents are wearing warm swishy brown corduroy trousers to auction festivities, there seems to have been a very slight nip in the air in the Sydney property market this week.   Now this assessment is only by comparison with 2014 and 2015 which were two of the hottest real estate years since the GFC – which were officially rated by the IPCC  -International Property Collectors Club – as “smoking hot”.

Compared to 2013, this week was still definitely birthday suit friendly.

Even so, to dispel this fractional temperature change, expect lots of calls over the next few weeks for APRA and the RBA to put another log on the fire with some  interest rate cuts and even easier access to “ezy credit” for households and easy access to the Australian property market for foreign investors.

Robert Gottliebsen, was quick to crank the thermostat to get the “heat tent” party started,  warning of all sorts of dire consequences if APRA and the RBA did not spray the Australian property market with  a few more tanker loads of cheap and tasty Bank created money.  The property industry is very lucky to have so many clever people who are quick to call on government and regulators to assist the industry with fresh supplies of tax payer guaranteed Bank created money at the first sign that boom time profits might slow.

This week the interns have been busy with their fingers and toes and have calculated the averages for the last 13 weeks.    Trend sniffers should enjoy Table 3.

The Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Property Monitors report records that agents reported 78% of the 523 auctions listed for Saturday – which is a bit above the recent average of 76%.

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 THREE tables this week.  The first contains yesterday’s APM’s  results pdf sliced and diced.  The second contains a summary of recent weeks and the third contains the data and averages for the first 13 weeks of Auction Action fun.

A few comments on yesterday:

• 523 auctions were scheduled – With Easter now 2 weeks past it feels like 2016 will not be a repeat of 2015 or 2014.
• A clearance rate – 49% of scheduled auctions
• A reduced but still very juicy median of $1,210,000 – up almost $400,000 on 2013. 
• Pre-Action Panic – sitting pretty on 28%.
• Hammer Time – softened to 29% with  154 of the listed auctions being resolved by sundown.
• Seller Sadness – rose back to 12%  with a rise in the number of passed in auctions suggesting that either the market is getting colder or property owners were getting a little more cocky than the market allowed.

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:   652 versus 523 on SMH/APM
• % of results reported:                      81%  (439 of 652)
• Clearance as % of rep:                     67%
• Clearance as % of sched:                 46%
• Pre-Action Panic:                             16% of the sched auctions
• Hammer Time:                                  36% of the sched auctions
• Seller Sadness:                                   15% of the sched auctions

• The metrics are reasonably consistent with the SMP/APM results having regard to the differences in reporting rates.  The higher hammer time result suggests that auctions that are held during the week generally have a higher success rate.

Table 1 – Saturday 9 April 2016

Table 2 – Summary of recent results.

Table – Summary of the first 13 weeks of Auction Action