Melbourne units are scoring more reliable sales results at auction than houses.
Melbourne’s units are doing better at auction than houses, with recent weeks’ clearance rates giving apartments and townhouses as much as a 10 per cent advantage over stand-alone homes.
Over three of the past four weeks the clearance rate has been higher for units than for houses.
Yesterday, the preliminary clearance rate came in at 52.1 per cent for all sales, after 326 results were recorded.
While sales results are still being gathered, a week ago the final results came in at 51.3 per cent for houses going under the hammer and 62 per cent for units.
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REA Group senior economist Anne Flaherty said with first-home buyers one of the key groups active in Melbourne at the moment and interest rates compressing other buyers into more affordable price brackets, there were likely just more buyers for the available units than there were for houses.
“If we think about how much prices have moved, price variations for houses have been a little stronger and for units they have been a bit more resilient,” Ms Flaherty said.
“So house buyers might be biding their time more than those looking to get a unit.”
The economist added that units had been outperforming houses in most suburbs, suggesting the auction success story would be felt broadly across Melbourne.
![2/6 Hennessy St, Brunswick - for herald sun real estate](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 1280 720"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
2/6 Hennessy St, Brunswick, sold for $917,000 — after it was listed for $850,000-$900,000.
With the number of homes for sale about 40 per cent below the same time a year ago over the next fortnight, there would be scope that “even with investor demand being significantly reduced, if there’s limited choice that might help the performance of the properties that do head to market”.
Real Estate Institute of Victoria chief executive Toby Balazs said the variance in clearance rates likely reflected higher demand from first-home buyers.
“It isn’t a huge surprise … there’s probably two factors at play, one being affordability and in a market driven by affordability, you would say that’s why their values and clearance rates are holding up,” Mr Balazs said.
“And it’s also possibly due to apartment construction activity. There hasn’t been a huge amount of stock being brought to market new, compared to years gone by.”
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