Welcome to the November edition of “The Hammer Report”.

November surprised us with a twist in market behaviour when the percentage of properties being sold prior to auction doubled to 26% which had a direct impact on the under the hammer rate falling to 30%. It was clear that highly motivated buyers were determined to remove any further competition on auction day and provided sellers with a pre-auction offer that would usurp their “nirvana” figure on the day, and with a robust 27.8 million dollars of property offered during the month results can be easily influenced with a slight shift in buyer sentiment.

Market conditions had a dramatic shift in November compared to October with the total properties sold within 35 days moving back to 63%. A contributing factor to this result was the number of bidders per auction back from an average of three to one and half, which did have an effect, as a number of bidders did not reach an acceptable figure for a seller to accept leading to 26% of properties offered for the month not selling in the 35 day period, however it needs to be noted many of these properties did sell within 40 – 45 days of the auction with a small percentage of sellers choosing to remove their property from the market.

The number of properties for sale in the Perth region moved up from 14,947 in October to 15,572 in November* which is a shift in the economic dynamic of supply/demand hence the result was not totally unexpected, and given the average days on market still hover in the 70 day range, even in a Seller v’s Seller market, auction results leave no doubt of their superior marketing advantage to a seller.