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Brendan Wong
A leading real estate network has recorded significant growth in auction volumes across the country over the past year.
According to auctioneer for CENTURY 21 Auction Services Will Hampson, the network's volume of auctions surged by 87.5 per cent on-year for the January to September period.
The figure is almost four times the growth recorded across Australia, based on statistics from RP Data.
Figures from the research group reveal that between February and September last year, there were 42,013 auctions across the combined capital cities. During the same timeframe this year, there were 51,046 auctions across the capitals - an increase of 21.5 per cent.
Mr Hampson said there were a number of factors that had contributed to the rise in auction volumes.
“Average time of home ownership across Australia has increased from seven years to nine years. More people stay in properties longer and some of the properties that we’re taking to auction, we’ve found owners have been in them for 25 to 30 years," he said.
“There’s that pent-up demand for people wanting to get into those tightly-held suburbs.
“We’ve got 30-year record-low interest rates at 2.5 per cent, a shortage of properties for sale across the marketplace and strong buyer demand both locally and from overseas.”
Mr Hampson added: “We’re seeing at a lot of the auctions, the cashed-up baby boomers and increased overseas demand, particularly from the Chinese buyers.
“Many baby boomers are seeing properties as a solid investment over superannuation.
“Some of the individual offices within the network have doubled and even tripled the number of auctions they’ve had this year.”
Over the past year, the auction market, namely in Sydney and Melbourne, has recorded strong performances.
According to Australian Property Monitors (APM), Sydney has recorded clearance rates above 80 per cent for 11 weekends out of 12. Similarly in Melbourne, auction clearance rates have averaged in the 70s.
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