Winter Auction Market Reports Slow And Steady Results
Sydney recorded its highest clearance rate since early July.
Sydney recorded its highest clearance rate since early July.
Weekend auction markets have ended July with solid winter results across the nation’s capitals.
The national auction market reported a clearance rate of 62.0% at the weekend — up on the 60.1% reported last weekend but lower than the 83.6% recorded over the same weekend last year.
The national auction numbers were again higher at the weekend with 1543 listings compared to last weekend’s 1487 — well below the same weekend last year’s 2203 auctions.
In Sydney, there was a small lift in the clearance rate with the NSW capital recording its highest weekend rate since early July of 62.5% — well above those of recent weeks. The result was also an improviement on last weekend’s 57.9% yet remained well below the 79.1% recorded over the same weekend last year.
Auction numbers were similar to the previous weekend with 570 reported compared to the 575 of the weekend prior. These figures are lower than the 623 auctioned over the same weekend last year.
Sydney recorded a median price of $1,497,000 for houses sold at auction at the weekend — lower than the $1505,500 recorded last weekend but 12.0% lower than the same weekend last year’s $1,700,661.
Melbourne’s weekend auction market has finished July with yet another consistent clearance rate with buyers and sellers engaging the mid-winter market.
The Victorian capital reported a clearance rate of 60.5% on Saturday which was yet again similar to the previous weekend’s 60.7% but again lower than the 77.6% recorded over the same weekend last year.
A total of 692 homes were reported listed at the weekend — higher than the 627 reported over the previous weekend but again well below the 1264 listed over the same weekend last year.
Melbourne recorded a median price of $970,000 for houses sold at auction at the weekend which was lower than the $1,000,000 reported last weekend but 0.3% higher than the $967,000 recorded over the same weekend last year.
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’