Flood Of Listings Hits The Auction Market
Clearance rates hold firm despite the deluge.
Clearance rates hold firm despite the deluge.
Auction markets across the country surged this weekend with buyers and sellers enjoying the restriction-free access to housing markets following the easing of covid lockdowns.
The surge in listings had little effect on buyer activity with formidable results continuing in all capitals.
The national weekend clearance rate sat at above 80% for the eighth consecutive weekend and although lower than the previous weekend’s 84.7% is still well above the 73.9% reported over the same weekend last year.
National auction numbers were higher at the weekend – up from the previous Saturday’s 2048 to 2424 – and well ahead of the 1261 auctioned over the same weekend last year.
The Sydney market is back above 80% — bouncing back from the previous weekend’s 77.0% and also above the 79.1% for the same weekend last year.
The results comes despite a lift in auction numbers with 887 homes listed for auction – up on the previous weekend’s 721 and well above the 768 auctioned over the same weekend last year.
Auction numbers were the highest since the lockdown impacted market in early July.
Sydney recorded a median price of $1,900,000 for houses sold at auction at the weekend which was well above the $1,685,000 reported over the previous Saturday and 25.8% higher than the $1,510,000 recorded over the same weekend last year.
Melbourne continued its strong run out of lockdown with a clearance rate of 80.5% over the weekend – similar to the previous weekend’s 80.4% and higher than the 78.0% recorded over the same weekend last year.
A total of 1193 homes were listed for auction at the weekend — higher than the 994 reported over the previous weekend and well above the 395 auctioned over the same weekend last year.
Melbourne recorded a median price of $1,145,000 for houses sold at auction at the weekend which was higher than the $1,048,000 recorded over the previous weekend and 27.4% higher than the $898,500 recorded over the same weekend last year.
Auction markets continue to report strong results for most sellers despite a wave of new listings reflecting the recent end of lockdowns. Buyer depth however will be tested over coming weekends as the end of year rush-to-market by sellers continues.
Data powered by Dr Andrew Wilson, My Housing Market.
Consumers are going to gravitate toward applications powered by the buzzy new technology, analyst Michael Wolf predicts
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
A new AI-driven account by leading landscape architect Jon Hazelwood pushes the boundaries on the role of ‘complex nature’ in the future of our cities
Drifts of ground cover plants and wildflowers along the steps of the Sydney Opera House, traffic obscured by meadow-like planting and kangaroos pausing on city streets.
This is the way our cities could be, as imagined by landscape architect Jon Hazelwood, principal at multi-disciplinary architectural firm Hassell. He has been exploring the possibilities of rewilding urban spaces using AI for his Instagram account, Naturopolis_ai with visually arresting outcomes.
“It took me a few weeks to get interesting results,” he said. “I really like the ephemeral nature of the images — you will never see it again and none of those plants are real.
“The AI engine makes an approximation of a grevillea.”
Hazelwood chose some of the most iconic locations in Australia, including the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, as well as international cities such as Paris and London, to demonstrate the impact of untamed green spaces on streetscapes, plazas and public space.
He said he hopes to provoke a conversation about the artificial separation between our cities and the broader environment, exploring ways to break down the barriers and promote biodiversity.
“A lot of the planning (for public spaces) is very limited,” Hazelwood said. “There are 110,000 species of plants in Australia and we probably use about 12 in our (public) planting schemes.
“Often it’s for practical reasons because they’re tough and drought tolerant — but it’s not the whole story.”
Hazelwood pointed to the work of UK landscape architect Prof Nigel Dunnett, who has championed wild garden design in urban spaces. He has drawn interest in recent years for his work transforming the brutalist apartment block at the Barbican in London into a meadow-like environment with diverse plantings of grasses and perennials.
Hazelwood said it is this kind of ‘complex nature’ that is required for cities to thrive into the future, but it can be hard to convince planners and developers of the benefits.
“We have been doing a lot of work on how we get complex nature because complexity of species drives biodiversity,” he said.
“But when we try to propose the space the questions are: how are we going to maintain it? Where is the lawn?
“A lot of our work is demonstrating you can get those things and still provide a complex environment.”
At the moment, Hassell together with the University of Melbourne is trialling options at the Hills Showground Metro Station in Sydney, where the remaining ground level planting has been replaced with more than 100 different species of plants and flowers to encourage diversity without the need for regular maintenance. But more needs to be done, Hazelwood said.
“It needs bottom-up change,” he said. ““There is work being done at government level around nature positive cities, but equally there needs to be changes in the range of plants that nurseries grow, and in the way our city landscapes are maintained and managed.”
And there’s no AI option for that.
Consumers are going to gravitate toward applications powered by the buzzy new technology, analyst Michael Wolf predicts
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’