Jarrod McCabe, director, Wakelin Property Advisory:
Hi, everyone. Well, we’ve certainly moved back into the auction market now with the ability to conduct auctions with 10 people in place on site, as well as agents and vendors, and then 10 people at open for inspections as well.
The market’s gradually starting to open up again. We witnessed an interesting auction on the weekend, Unit 1 at number 4 Dickins Street in Elwood. The agents elected with this one to have an auction but conducted with both in person attendees and in person bidders, as well as those bidding via an online portal.
An interesting mix but it certainly didn’t deter interested parties. There was over 22 bids placed on the property between six bidders, both in person and online, so quite competitive. I think of the first seven bids there were six different bidders so everyone got involved early. You don’t always see that with auctions where everyone’s attending. Quite often people sit back and observe. However, this one did have a lot of first home buyers and so first home buyers, they can go one of two ways, they can sit back and do nothing or they can fight to be heard first up, and that tended to be the case with this property. It was quoted at 690 to 730, opening bid at 700, and then, as I said, things moved pretty quickly. It was all over and done with inside 10 minutes. At the end, we had one in person bidder competing with someone online and it ended up being the online bidder that was successful with the final $1,000 bid, and it sold for 812,000, so well excess of the quoted range.
We are seeing a bit more activity around at present. There’s a few more people out and about. I think the clearance rate on the weekend was around 70%. However, put that into context, I think there was only sort of mid-100s, 150, 160 auctions that occurred.
It’s not necessarily an indicative that the market’s in a strong state. I think the test will really come when the supply starts to pick up and we really see how many active buyers are actually out in the marketplace. Interesting times but great to have auctions back and people able to get out and about and look at properties.
Continue to be aware of your social distancing. Look after yourselves and we look forward to speaking and chatting soon. Thank you.
