The never ending auction sale of 2024.

Media articles are swirling around thick and fast about the current state of the property market, its overall performance and what could be in store for us as we edge towards the Spring cycle. As we’ve been reporting across our resource centre, this is a modest Sydney market with fewer ready-to-perform buyers meaning that sellers need to keep ambitions somewhat in check. CoreLogic data has Sydney prices at peak level, tipping the last data peak in 2022. However, the journey to securing a sale is certainly different to those heady COVID days when the cash rate was at a never-seen-before low.

The depth of the buyer pool is being tested, with most properties drawing in only a few purchasers who are committed to making an offer. It’s in this more delicate market that some may question the point of setting an auction date when competitive tension is far harder to generate. It’s somewhat of a complex answer but in simple terms, having a date set by which the market must react and make a decision remains very important. This brings us to the evolving sales strategy which so many agents now deploy with reckless abandon. If you’re an active buyer you would have seen many properties scheduled for an initial auction date only to have this pushed back by two weeks, extending a four-week campaign to six weeks. In most cases it’s to protect their own auction track record as opposed to being the ideal advice for their client.

We don’t mind a six-week campaign – quite often in a climate like this a couple of additional weeks can allow prospective buyers to get their finances in order and make a superior offer. Where things are starting to get a little strange is when we see agents continually extending their auctions out past eight weeks, when such a move has little to do with giving purchasers more time to get ready and more about protecting the agent’s clearance rate. Gazing across the market in recent months, we’ve noticed this trend evolving more and more, which is being rightly questioned by the savvy buyer pool. If your auction’s been extended twice and you’re looking at an eight-week or even longer campaign, it’s fair to say that the price guide is wrong, the agent has misrepresented the property, or the auction process simply isn’t the right selling strategy.

Let’s get real. Recording a sale eight or more weeks after two failed attempts after the original auction date and yet still referring to it as ‘auction sold’ is nothing more than a manipulation of the system. Moreover, for such campaigns the data often reflects that the final sale price is considerably below the initial guide, meaning that it’s not only a lengthy process but also an outcome well below the seller’s expectations. It’s critical for any prospective purchaser to be aware of these tactics which have accelerated in 2024. Every buyer should review how long a property has been on the market, whether the auction has been pushed back multiple times and whether there have been significant price cuts during the process. Having this knowledge and awareness is crucial and could save you thousands of dollars and a heck of a lot of wasted emotional energy.