This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
THE Real Estate Institute of Victoria has hit back at claims that its auctions results are inaccurate and misleading and that the health of the market could be worse if it was forced to disclose all results.
REIV CEO Enzo Raimondo maintains that vendors have a right to privacy and should not be forced to disclose the result of their auction, including whether the property was sold or passed in at auction, as well as the price the property fetch or the price it was passed in.
Raimondo also took a swipe at the Fairfax owned Australian Property Monitors and said the REIV was the largest source of data in Victoria and its results represent around 90% of auction sales and 75% of all metropolitan residential sales, which is sufficient to determine how the market is performing.
Although insiders previously told Property Review that the REIV had told agents not to disclose results to the APM. Up until two years ago, APM had a high rate of agents reporting auction results, however that has since changed and every week the APM only collects a fraction of the data compared to the REIV.
Meanwhile last weekend, the REIV reported an improvement in the auction market. The clearance rate was 59% compared to 55% in the previous weekend and 66% in the same weekend last year. There were 443 auctions reported and 263 homes sold totalling $182.65 million. There were 180 properties passed in, 116 of those on a vendors bid and 52 auctions did not disclose a result.
APM’s Home Price Guide reported 470 auctions listings but only 146 results were disclosed of which 92 homes were sold totalling $60.3 million.
There were 473 private sales totalling $222.59 million.
Raimondo said an increase in listings is expected in spring and vendors looking to sell at auction will welcome the small improvement in demand. The REIV expects around 585 auctions next weekend.
In Sydney there were 276 auction listings and 210 properties reportedly went under the hammer and 148 sold totalling $117.7 million. This is an improvement from the previous weekend’s result of 202 auctions and 121 sales totalling $96.4 million. In the same weekend last year, Sydney had 287 auctions and 208 sales totalling $171.5 million.
In the smaller auction markets, Adelaide and Brisbane, 13 and 23 properties went under the hammer respectively, of which one and nine sold totalling $0.6 million and $3.9 million.
Australian Property Journal
