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AFTER a slow start to the new year, the pace of Melbourne’s property market looks set to pick up in next month.

How Melbourne’s property market will shape up this year is anyone’s guess. So far in 2011, too few properties have changed hands to give away any clues.

Some encouragement can be taken from Melbourne’s average house prices rising 9.21 per cent in 2010 — a difficult year, generally, for securing decent returns on investments of any kind.

Some property pundits predict low numbers of Melbourne houses listed for sale will drive up competition among buyers, increasing prices.

Others are pessimistic, forecasting poor single-digit percentage increases in Melbourne housing values for much of this decade.

As always, interest rate movements are an unpredictable variable.

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The best guess in the current economic climate is for a couple of small rate rises during 2011.

Real Estate Institute of Victoria communications manager Robert Larocca says just a couple of homes have gone under the hammer in the first few weeks of 2011.

“The pace, however, will pick up over the next month,” Larocca says.

The REIV expects about 60 auctions this weekend, 130 on the last weekend of the month and 180 on the first weekend in February.

“This number of listings is broadly in keeping with this time last year,” Larocca says. “As a result, at this time it is not possible to get a sense of how the market is performing.”