The ACT property market made history this year with soaring house prices and large numbers of buyers, but another groundbreaking record was broken – the number of auctions performed while wearing pyjamas.
While 2020 may have seen the emergence of the zoom auction, 2021 was the year auctioneers perfected the art of the ‘business on the top, trackies on the bottom’ lockdown work-fit.
Even with the lockdown disruption to auctions across the Territory, ACT auction records continued to go from strength to strength, with the online version becoming a normal part of the Covid-19 real estate market.
Records from Ray White show that across Canberra in 2021, October was their biggest month for number of auctions and average active bidders, sitting at 72 and 5.1 respectively. The largest percentage in the gap between the highest prior offer and the actual sale price was 15.6 per cent, recorded in June.
This compares to the previous year, when the highest number of auctions was 55 in October, and the highest number of average active bidders was 3.9 in September. The largest percentage in the gap between the highest prior offer and the sale price was 11.5 per cent in December 2020.
Chief economist at Ray White, Nerida Conisbee, said 2021 has seen the highest number of sold properties ever recorded by the group.
“Overall, we are seeing similar conditions in Canberra as the rest of Australia – lots of stock coming on to market which is calming things down a bit,” Ms Conisbee said.
“Average active bidders and the gap between the highest prior offer and auction sale price has come down a bit because of more stock.”
Sellers who held off from snatching up a pre-auction offer on average tended to achieve 11.9 per cent more on auction day, she said.
Ray White group managing director, Dan White, said 2021’s auction market was competitive, created by high buyer demand combined with a low amount of stock.
“For much of the year, buyers struggled with a lack of stock as lockdowns made sellers more cautious,” Mr White said.
“In November, we saw the numbers of properties for sale catapult upwards by more than 21 per cent nationally. So much so, that in the last week of the month, we saw the most properties going to auction we had ever recorded.”
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