You often hear famous comedians lamenting over their early days of stand up when they had to follow one of the all time greats on stage – Eddie Murphy or Chris Rock or Robin Williams – and absolutely bombed.
I’m sure they still did a great set but it’s near on impossible as a mere mortal to maintain that level of fervour from the crowd when they’ve just experienced a GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) performance.
October 2021 was a GOAT month for real estate.
Jellis Craig smashed their previous monthly sales record by close to 50%. Over 1000 sales.
Team Fetter/Sciola also sold 14 more houses in October than our previous record month. Nearly double.
The REIV recorded 5,459 sales in October with an average clearance rate of 88 per cent. This is incredible in both volume and clearance, which don’t often go hand-in-hand.
Contrast this to November, which was also a very high volume month at 5,024 auctions, but with a clearance rate of 79 per cent.
This is still a very strong clearance rate on an historical level. In fact, 79 per cent would be considered a bull market. Agents would take a high 70s clearance rate any day of the week.
However, when compared to one of the hottest month’s in real estate ever, it just appears somewhat slower and less energetic.
Interestingly, 20 per cent of homes scheduled for auction in November sold prior to auction, which is higher than usual.
The reason for this could be twofold.
Firstly, demand driven – keen buyers were making very compelling pre-auction offers that triggered an early sale either with or without competition.
Secondly, supply driven – vendors and/or agents were willing to entertain early offers in order to isolate their best buyers and lock in an acceptable price rather than run the risk of passing in at auction, amongst a sea of competing properties.
Likely both of these scenarios were playing out depending on the interest of the specific campaign.
Prices rose another six per cent in the September quarter, even though we were locked down for most of it.
This follows a six per cent price rise in the June quarter, and therefore, 12 per cent growth in just six months.
This is simply astounding, and the fastest pace of house price growth ever recorded by the REIV.
So it is not surprising that things are calming down a bit, while remaining strong.
It is not normal for an auctioneer to call 20 auctions in a row that all sell under the hammer like I did in October.
It is normal to call a couple of pass ins in a row like I did in November. But two out of 10 ain’t bad. That’s still an 80 per cent strike rate.
And October was a very hard act to follow.
David Sciola 