Capitals clearance rate hits highest level

Oksana Patron

6 June 2023

The combined capitals preliminary clearance rate rose to 77.2%, the highest rate since October, 2021, putting five capital cities above 70% mark, according to CoreLogic’s weekly data ending 4 June.

This means that the combined capital’s preliminary clearance rate trended higher for the third consecutive week and of the 1,440 results collected so far, 77.2% reported a successful result.

By comparison, last week’s preliminary clearance rate was -1.3 percentage points lower at 75.9% (revised to 71.5% at final numbers), while this time last year, a clearance rate of 58.2% was reported.

The busiest auction market this week was Sydney, which saw 754 homes auctioned against 698 homes successfully having gone under hammer last week.

But although this week’s Sydney auction activity was up 8% it was still down -17.3% below this time last year’s levels .

According to CoreLogic, the continued uptick in the clearance rate was being driven by buyer demand, with the portion of properties passed in at auction (8.9%) falling to its lowest rate since mid-October 2021, while the withdrawal rate rose slightly to 11.5%.

At the same time, the auction activity across the smaller capitals rose in Canberra (81), fell in Brisbane (117) and held steady across Adelaide (118) week-on-week.

Brisbane, on the other hand, recorded its highest preliminary rate since mid-February 2022 (80.7%), with 76.9% of auctions reporting a successful result.

In Perth, just two of the seven results collected so far have returned a successful result, while no auctions were held in Tasmania this week.

CoreLogic also said that the activity was expected to ease next week due to the long weekend across six of the eight states and territories but it would rebound the following week.