Although auction numbers are still well down on where they were at this time last year, the sales ratio is higher

Auction rooms around the country are coming back to life, with interest.co.nz monitoring 79 auctions last week (18-24 May) compared with just 12 the previous week.

Although the numbers are continuing to rise, they still have quite a distance to go until they are back up to where they were at this time last year (18-26 May 2019), when interest.co.nz monitored 226 auctions throughout the country.

However it's likely that auction numbers will increase significantly in June.

An interesting feature of last week's auctions was that although the number of properties offered was relatively small compared to the same time last year, the sales ratio was higher.

Of the 79 properties offered at auctions monitored by interest.co.nz last week, just under half were sold with sales achieved on 38 properties, giving a sales rate of 48%.

That was well up on the 35% sales rate achieved in the week 18-26 May last year.

Anecdotal evidence from agents suggests a level of pent up demand built up during the lockdown, from people who wanted or need to buy a property reasonably quickly and had the cash available to do so and that is likely supporting auction sales.

Prices also appear to be holding up reasonably well so far, with interest.co.nz able to match selling prices with Rating Valuations (RVs) on all but two of the properties that sold last week, and prices were higher than RVs on 71% of the matched sales.

Of course RVs should not be used as an indicator of market price and many RVs are more than three years old making them well out of date. But what the figures do suggest at this stage is that there has not been a major price collapse in the market.

Another noticeable trend since the market started opening back up after lockdown is that more agencies are now streaming their auctions live on the internet.

Although many vendors and potential buyers still prefer to attend auctions in person, a significant number are bidding online or over the telephone and it's likely that internet auctions will remain a widespread feature of the auction scene from now on.

Details of the individual properties offered at the auctions monitored by interest.co.nz and the prices achieved, are available on our Residential Auction Results page.

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