The football grand finals over the weekend are the real start to the spring selling season, RP Data’s Cameron Kusher has said.
“The spring selling season really starts to ramp up after the grand finals this weekend,” he told Your Investment Property sister publication Australian Broker Online.
He said overall performance so far showed modest growth and an improvement on last year, although listings of new properties were low.
“There are possibly a number of reasons [for this]. Firstly, there’s been this elevated amount of stock on the market for the last 12 months. Conditions haven’t been that strong in the housing market pretty much for the past 18 months.
“People know that it may not be the best time to sell, so are holding off on bringing their properties to the market. I think that’s probably the main reason,” he said.
In the 26 days leading up to the grand finals, auction clearance rates were also showing improvement from 2011, at an average of 50% to 55%.
“Last spring they were sitting generally around 45% each week, so although it’s still a long way from where the market was back in 2009, when you were often getting clearance rates of around 70% to 80%, it’s good that there’s been some noticeable improvement.”
As for whether the market will improve significantly from here out, Kusher said it would vary from state to state, and depend on the uptake of state government schemes.
“In NSW you’ll see maybe a greater level of activity for first home buyers after the 1st of October, when some of those incentives come in.
“Generally speaking, across the country I don’t think you’re going to see a significant improvement as people are saving money and credit growth is still slow,” he said.
