Of the 77 houses listed for the official opening of the auction year, 41 were for seaside properties.
VENDORS took advantage of the last week of school holidays to try to sell their seaside homes to holidaymakers enjoying the sunny weather.
Of the 77 houses listed for the official opening of the auction year, 41 were for seaside properties in suburbs fronting Port Phillip Bay or the coast, west or east of Melbourne.
The near-perfect beach conditions outshone memories of last year when Melbourne’s property market was at its weakest in more than a decade. Four of the top five auctions were for sales in seaside locations.
A three-bedroom St Pauls Road home in Sorrento led the pack, selling for $1.4 million.
Further down the coast, 130 Canterbury Jetty Road in Blairgowrie sold for $670,000.
The size of the Sorrento block, about 1400 sq m, helped clinch a buyer from the 150-strong crowd that attended its auction, Fletchers selling agent Rebecca Marsh said.
”Anything above $800,000 is performing better. Buyers are less conservative at that level,” Ms Marsh said.
”The market is picking up a little. It’s been a busy summer,” she said.
Two weeks earlier, a seven-bedroom property, also in St Pauls Road, sold for $2.1 million.
Hayden Real Estate’s Robyn Grumley said only two of the eight Ocean Grove properties the company advertised for auction were sold at the weekend.
Despite having three bidders, one of those properties at 142 Sunset Strip was passed in at $485,000, Ms Grumley said. ”It has been reasonably tough. Buyers are still a bit reluctant,” she said.
”We get a lot of people holidaying down this way and deciding to buy. Vendors put their properties on the market because of the influx,” she said.
Overall, there were too few properties listed to generate an accurate clearance rate, the Real Estate Institute of Victoria said. Next weekend, it expects about 140 auctions.
Nervous vendors and buyers were still facing significant headwinds this year.
Turbulent sharemarkets and weakness in global economies were likely to reinforce last year’s cautious consumer sentiment.
But another interest rate cut has been the subject of speculation by property watchers and if it occurred it would build confidence and increase activity, said Greville Pabst, head of national valuer and buyer advocacy business WBP Property.
”The latest auction readings indicate increased interest from buyers and sellers during November and December,” he said.
Property data from the REIV and Fairfax-owned Australian Property Monitors for the past three months of 2011 suggests a slight pick-up in median house prices. The REIV said median house prices rose in the December quarter by 1.9 per cent, while APM pegged the growth at 1.1 per cent.
Market watchers will be eyeing the release of similar quarterly results from RP Data this week to get a fix on market conditions for the start of the year.