Buying and selling in a cooling market - John McGrath

Weekends have always been a busy time for real estate agents, with auctions as well as open homes for prospective buyers and tenants.

At the same time, we have been experiencing not only a traditionally quieter Winter season but also a market correction and auction clearance rate declines, which have impacted consumer sentiment.

But there’s a reason why I always encourage buyers and home owners not to be discouraged by market corrections, and I’ll repeat it again now: at some point in the cycle, property inevitably rises and falls, so don’t be surprised or scared by these market dips.

As I look at our company's average days on market, which is one of our key indicators for performance last year at this time, it was 30 days on market for auctions and this year it's 31. So, virtually little difference and that is quite encouraging.

This is as a result of many of our auctions actually selling within the first two weeks of the campaign. Whereas our private treaty sales have blown out from around 42 this time last year to now 55 this year.

So overall, the auction picture isn't all bad, with this process still performing well and delivering good results.