00:02Auction clearance rates essentially explain the number of successful auctions that happened
00:08over the weekend, and Sydney has definitely done far worse than every other capital city,
00:14and some are saying perhaps this is some early evidence that Sydney property investors are
00:20maybe not liking the government's changes to negative gearing and the capital gains
00:25tax discount, which were announced in last Tuesday's budget. So just to set the scene,
00:30so in Sydney over the week there were 600 or so auctions, that was down 15% on a week
00:37ago,
00:38and the preliminary clearance rate dropped to 49.2%. So it seems like less than about, you know,
00:46just over half the auctions were not successful. So that's a pretty poor outcome considering,
00:51you know, when the property market was very heated in Sydney years ago, you were seeing
00:55clearance rates of 80%. They were selling like hotcakes. So these figures come from cootality,
01:00and they say this is the worst outcome, this 49% clearance rate for Sydney, since auction results
01:06were heavily disrupted during the early COVID pandemic in April 2020. But look, I guess it's
01:13just anecdotal that it could be related to the budget. I mean, there are other things that
01:17may be affecting a housing sentiment in Sydney. For example, we've had three interest rate hikes
01:22from the Reserve Bank. With economists forecasting, there could be two more by the end of the year,
01:27with a war in the Middle East as well, and a high inflation environment, which is possibly going to
01:32get even higher. So that's weighing on things. But I said it's a very mixed market. As I mentioned,
01:39they're behaving in different ways, different capitals. For example, in Melbourne, the clearance rate
01:44went actually up to about a 61%. Brisbane's went up to 55%. Adelaide's went up above 75%. So,
01:53look, it might have something to do with the fact that Sydney's a market that's, you know,
01:58heavily dominated by, you know, investor buying historically anyway. But I guess we'll have to
02:04see more further weeks of data to see whether this trend holds.
02:07.
02:08.
02:08.
02:08.
02:10You
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