Lockdowns continued throughout September across New South Wales and Victoria with restrictions slowly beginning to ease. Vaccination rates continue to increase across the country, providing hope for further easing of restrictions before the end of year festive season.
The preliminary auction data for the last week of September recorded the highest weighted average clearance rate since March of this year with a weighted average of 82.4% of properties being sold. Adelaide, Canberra and Sydney performed the best, recording 87.7%, 85.9% and 84.3% clearance rates respectively whilst, Brisbane and Melbourne also achieved strong clearance rates of 79.7% and 77.2%. Total auctions were up on the same weekend of last year, with 1,631 auctions taking place compared to 1,082 in 2020.
Despite lockdowns continuing, property prices continue to increase rapidly with the year-on-year change above 14% across all cities and an average of 19.09%, with Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide leading the way with 23.39%, 21.28% and 19.04% respectively. The change quarter on quarter also remains positive with an average of 4.51%, again with Brisbane recording the strongest result at 5.99%, followed by Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne with 5.61%, 5.46% and 3.29% respectively.
The unit price across all three retail funds remains stable at $1.00.
This article appeared in our September 2021 Investor Newsletter – download the full newsletter here.