Auction Watch: Wet weather dampens sales in Canberra

Wet weather may have dampened Canberra’s first weekend of auctions this winter, with just over half of the listed properties selling under the hammer.

The clearance rate dipped to 55.2 per cent on Saturday, according to Australian Property Monitors.

The result comes off the back of the 68.8 per cent clearance rate recorded one week earlier, when six sales broke the million-dollar mark.

A renovated three-bedroom house in Page was among the successful sales, the hammer falling at $562,000.

Independent Property Group Gungahlin agent Andrew Potts said 16 parties registered to bid for 6 Hillebrand Street, with between 30 and 40 people packing inside the 106-square-metre house to escape the rain.

Mr Potts said he expected the property to sell around the $500,000 mark.

“The bidding was a little stronger than expected, which the sellers were happy about,” he said.

The successful buyers were a couple with a young child. They planned to extend the house.

Mr Potts expected buyer interest to remain strong over winter despite the increasing chill.

He said it was a good time to snag a sale ahead of the spring rush.

“I think people are still pretty active at the moment,” he said. “There still seems to be a lower number of established houses on the market.”

Across town, a crowd of close to 40 people crammed into a renovated, modernist house at 60 Gellibrand Street in Campbell to watch four of five registered bidders tussle for the inner south property.

The bidding began at $1.2 million and slowly crawled through the $1,300,000s.

One woman registered to bid halfway through the proceedings, joining the bidding at $1,382,000 without having inspected the house.

Competitive bidding up to $1.45 million wasn’t enough to meet the reserve price, with Luton auctioneer Tim Burke placing a vendor bid of $1.5 million before the property passed in.

Luton Properties Manuka agent Greg Hedger said he was negotiating with two of the parties.

He said the property had garnered plenty of interest, with about 80 groups inspecting the house and four of the five registered bidders looking through more than once.

Mr Hedger said Campbell remained tightly held, describing the suburb as a “cracker location” close to everything.

Like Mr Potts, he said there was “good interest” in the market despite the winter chill.

“There doesn’t seem to be huge concern around the election,” he said.

“Obviously, we have extremely favourable interest rates at the moment, which may have allowed some people [bidding on Saturday] to go a little bit higher than they would have.”