A crazy end to a crazy year

We had 2 really notable sales this month, starting at the beginning of the month with a Riverview property selling $225,000 above reserve, and concluding just before Xmas with a sale in Roseville almost $800,000 above reserve!

For the Riverview property, sold in the first weekend, Domain journalist Kate burke reported on this as part of a stellar weekend across the city, with a final city wide clearance rate of 78.8%, out of 759 properties (604 sales).

The property sold for $2,525,000, and the whole auction took mere minutes with the first bid $2.22 million. After that, the bids incremented to $2.28m and $2.3m, and then in $50k jumps. The buyer was an investor, who noted that of the many apartments in the area, many people will one day want a house. “It’s a hot market,” he said, “and there’s not much stock.”

Later in the article, another auctioneer commented that FOMO (fear of missing out) was back, with people concerned that with a potential COVID-19 vaccine in 2021, the market may return to full steam rather than edging forward as it has been in the last few months.

Just as the Riverview sale was featured on Domain, two weeks later the Roseville sale featured on realestate.com.au (recommended if just for the great photo of Chris in full flight), Aidan Devine describes market activity over the mid December city wide auctions as a ‘frenzy of buyer competition’, somewhat confirming similar fervour noted in the Domain article above. Not only were the weekend auctions peppered with higher than expected sale outcomes, there were also a significantly higher number of auctions compared to this time last year.

For this particular sale, Jill Henry, the selling agent of Stone Real Estate, described the auction as ‘extraordinary’:

“It was crazy that so many people registered,” she said. “It was a real mix of buyers. That competition made a real difference to the price.”

Like many things this year, Ms Henry suggested the pandemic may have played an influence on this outcome. “Most families are staying put this year and not going on holidays. Often the money they would have spent is going into property instead.”

Confirming the above, Core Logic reported on 18 December that the week to date was the busiest week for auctions in the capital cities since the beginning of April. In Sydney, 763 auctions were scheduled, compared to the year-ago figure of 248 auctions.

See you next year!