2 . No shortage of buyers
While it ’ s easy to track the number of properties for sale , tracking serious buyers is a little more difficult . Australians are property obsessed and enjoy looking at properties for sale and attending auctions , even if they have no intention of buying or selling .
To combat this , we have used the number of active bidders at auction to gauge buyer activity . If you make a bid at an auction , it can reasonably be assumed that you are a serious buyer .
Not surprisingly , the number of active bidders began to accelerate towards the end of September 2020 as it became apparent that the recession was likely over . By December , following the announcement of a number of vaccines and a further interest rate cut , conditions really began to surge and by late February we were seeing the highest number of active bidders ever recorded .
Since then , bidding activity has slowed a bit however it ’ s still substantially higher than previous winters . Activity seems to have stabilised a little but it ’ s still much higher than what we have seen before .
AVERAGE ACTIVE BIDDERS June 2019 to June 2021
4.0
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0 Summer shutdown 2019 / 2020
1.5
Post Royal Commission recovery
17-Jun-19 17-Jul-19
Weakening economy
Spring recovery 2020
First weeks of the pandemic
17-Aug-19 17-Sep-19
17-Oct-19 17-Nov-19
17-Dec-19 17-Jan-20
17-Feb-20 17-Mar-20
17-Apr-20 17-May-20
17-Jun-20
17-Jul-20
Note 1 : Based on 12,989 auctions conducted over this time period Note 2 : Rolling four week average has been applied Source : Ray White
Summer / Autumn surge 2021
17-Aug-20 17-Sep-20
17-Oct-20 17-Nov-20
17-Dec-20 17-Jan-21
17-Feb-21 17-Mar-21
17-Apr-21 17-May-21
6