There’s a lot of momentum in the market right now and a five day lockdown isn’t about to stop that.
If the lockdown is extended though it’s going to become a scheduling issue, first and foremost, with auctions and opens being delayed until we have the all clear.
Interestingly, the clearance rate for last weekend, even in lockdown, was a whopping 92% across 329 scheduled auctions.
This tells me that most agents and vendors forged ahead with either an online auction, a snap in person auction on Friday, or sold before auction via private negotiation.
If the buyers were there and ready to go, why wait?
This was absolutely the case with our office group, with only a handful of auctions being rescheduled or delayed and the rest being sold on time or ahead of time – albeit not on the street.
Our upcoming campaigns due to start on the weekend have been delayed a few days but we are still working towards the same auction dates for now.
March is set to be a very busy auction month with vendors still wanting to get in before Easter.
For the pipeline, there may be a couple of cautious vendors who decide to wait a bit longer before coming to market, but this would be the minority, unless things escalate.
On the demand side, most buyers will not be overly phased by a short lockdown, but the possibility of future lockdowns and the potential this has to further restrict supply may only increase the urgency to secure a home while they can.
The weekend’s strong results tend to support this theory.
David Sciola 