Agents have been reporting  that house prices are remaining stable throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, due to a slow down in listings with a continued high buyer demand.

The Agency has even reported certain properties not just stabilising but performing strongly with promising turnover in the entry level categories and suburb records broken in the prestige sector.

One such property is 177a Albion Street, Surry Hills which sold through The Agency's Ben Collier, around its price guide of $12 million, breaking the suburb record by well over $3 million.

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177A Albion Street, Surry Hills sold for $12m,breaking the suburb record by $3m, through agent Ben Collier of The Agency. Photo: The Agency

In addition, Mr Collier sold 36 Martin Road, Centennial Park, in excess of $9 million and two Watsons Bay semi detached dwellings, set on a combined 475 sqm parcel of land, for a total of $10.5 million.

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36 Martin Road, Centennial Park sold for over $9m through agent Ben Collier of The Agency. Photo: The Agency

“Leading up to Easter we saw a pause in the market, but post Easter, confidence had lifted and enquiries picked up significantly,” said Mr Collier.

“As people have adjusted to the pandemic environment a sense of stability has returned and this will continue to grow as the lockdown restrictions are eased."

In the Perth market, The Agency has seen strong turnover in properties sitting beneath the median house price of $480,000 and located within the 10km ring around Perth’s CBD. 

“We are seeing unabated demand from first home buyers who have identified great value for money in the current property market,” said Stuart Cox, The Agency’s WA General Manager.

“These first home buyers are further supported by the government’s Keystart low-deposit home loans.”

Perth-based agent Adam Naumovski, who specialises in the $360,000 to $450,000 price bracket, has achieved a record-breaking quarter, listing 41 properties and selling 31 one of those homes in the current market. 

Overall, the strength in the results outlined above occurring on both sides of Australia, along with the consistent sales performance seen in our regional areas, the property market to date has been far more resilient than many predicted.

“In the early stages of COVID-19 we saw constricted interest in certain price ranges, however, in the past week we’ve seen a genuine appetite from buyers, from entry level properties all the way through to the luxury market,” said The Agency’s Head of Sales, Thomas McGlynn.

“We believe this is an extremely positive sign for the residential real estate market across Australia, given the results we have seen on the east and west coasts of Australia.” 

Auctions

This week, 590 capital city homes were scheduled for auction, with preliminary results returning a 59.6 per cent clearance rate.

The previous week saw 413 homes scheduled for auction and a final clearance rate of 41.1 per cent with the lower volumes likely due to Anzac Day commemorations.

One year ago, there were 1,479 homes taken to auction and a 52.5 per cent clearance rate.

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Source: CoreLogic

It’s likely the number of scheduled auctions will remain substantially lower than normal, at least until social distancing policies are lifted and on-site auctions can resume.

With fewer scheduled auctions, we are likely to see the withdrawn rate start to normalise which is likely to have a positive flow-on affect to the clearance rate.

It has been dragged lower over the past month due to a surge in auction withdrawals which are counted as unsold in the clearance rate statistics.

As we’ve seen over the last few weeks, the number of auction results collected at a preliminary stage are lower than usual as we seek to confirm the status of scheduled auctions so results should be interpreted with caution.

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