In January 2016, as previously reported, Melbourne had a good start as the month ended with a closing rate of 74 percent from 55 reported auctions. In fact Melbourne is said to have twice as many auctions as Sydney with 98 auctions over the same weekend and nearly doubled the number of auctions it had on the same week last year. As great as this may sound for Melbourne, it was yet too early to tell if the city's real estate is headed towards growth.
Last week's strong auction rippled to inner east areas of Melbourne this week. According to Domain, even if only 11 auctions were held out of a total of 199 metropolitan auctions, Melbourne was still ahead of other markets with a clearance rate of 79 percent from the 151 auction results reported on Saturday. The clearance rate may be up by 5 percent but experts have already predicted that real estate in Melbourne is rather cooling down.
According to Zillow, it was predicted that the city will see a subtle increase in home prices by 3.3 percent in the next 11 months. This will most likely change as affordability has become a concern among growing number of buyers.
At the moment, the inner east suburbs of Melbourne, like Boroondara and Stonnington, is expected to see a sharp increase in auctions in the next six weeks but buyers are already looking into the next best suburbs. Prices in the inner east have been rising over the last three years that buyers have begun turning to the north, west and south of the city. Domain Group chief economist Andrew Wilson believes that middle and outer areas of Melbourne's east, the northern and western suburbs and, especially, the south-east corridor will get a lot of interest from buyers this year.
Next weekend the market is scheduled to auction 441 properties and hopefully by then, analysts can come up with a well-aimed market outlook.
