Sydney's auction clearance rate rose to 81.1 per cent in the week to Saturday, its highest so far this year, driven by demand for the city's inner-ring and northern suburbs.
The $3.83 million sale of a four-bedroom family house in the inner-city suburb of Annandale - $430,000 above reserve - showed the strength of inner suburbs of the NSW capital, which led Melbourne's preliminary 79.9 per cent and Canberra's 78.4 per cent clearance rates, CoreLogic's preliminary figures showed.
Auction listing levels are rising and activity is still running hot in Australia's east-coast markets. Clearances picked up even as the number of auctions across the capital cities rose to 3,147 this week from 2,916 a week earlier, making the second-highest number of auctions since 3,301 in the last week of February.
Sydney had 1,082 auctions and Melbourne 1,601 scheduled for the week.
"That [Sydney] clearance rate of 81.1 per cent – we've got over 1000 auctions - that is a strong performance," said CoreLogic spokesman Kevin Brogan on Sunday. "Melbourne also had another really strong performance. It's only hair's-breadth away from 80 per cent on a volume of 1600 auctions."
The figures were in line with numbers reported by Domain Group - owned by Fairfax Media, the publisher of The Australian Financial Review - which showed an 80.2 per cent clearance rate for Sydney and 79.5 per cent for Melbourne.
A Los Angeles-based Australian family beat three other bidders, mostly local families, in Saturday's auction for the 65 View Street home, which struck a record Annandale price for a home on less than 400 square metres.
"They were very specific about where they wanted to be," said real estate agent Simone Azzi of Belle Property Annandale. "They wanted to not wait much longer in terms of being out of the market. They're probably going to be in the States for another 12 months, but were thinking in 12 months' time, what is 65 View Street going to be worth?"
The new owners are likely to rent out the house for about $2000 a week, Ms Azzi said.
At the other end of the price spectrum, hopeful purchasers who lined up early on Saturday purchased 54 of the 60 units Mirvac set aside for first home buyers in its Pavilions project at Sydney's Olympic Park.
In Melbourne's South Yarra, aged care developer John Matthies paid $7.3 million at auction on Saturday for a four-bedroom, two-storey house at 27-29 The Righi.
"It was a very good result," said RT Edgar agent Jeremy Fox. "It was a deceased estate and there wasn't really a reserve, but when the bidding stopped and had a pause – at about $7 million – I went to the [executor] and she said 'put it on the market and let it go'."
Mr Fox declined to confirm the buyer's identity.
But even with rising auction numbers, there are still fewer properties for sale than a year ago.
CoreLogic figures for the week to March 19 showed that Sydney had 21,997 residential properties on the market, 4.4 per cent below the same time last year - and a smaller number than the 22,675 homes for sale in Perth, a city one-third its size.
"It's quite a stark comparison," Mr Brogan said.
Melbourne had 29,949 properties for sale, down 4.1 per cent on a year earlier.
The lower stock levels are unlikely to improve in the short term, buyers' agent David Morrell said.
"There's nothing new going to come up come up this side of Easter," he said.
Despite recent moves by commercial banks to raise lending rates for investors, they remain active. Investors paid $1,021,000 for a one-bedroom apartment at 501/200 Campbell Street in Sydney's Surry Hills - $71,000 above reserve - on Saturday.
The new curbs may take time to work, Mr Brogan said.
"It's not something that's necessarily going going to have an immediate impact."
With Su-Lin Tan.
