The Melbourne property market has been left to scrape together what it can from what was scheduled to be one of the biggest auction weekends this year as the city is plunged into its fourth lockdown.
Vendors have been forced to postpone their listing or move the sale online on what was set to be a super Saturday with 1269 properties booked to go under the hammer.
Scott Patterson is the director at Kay & Burton and told Domain there were plenty of vendors happy to move their auction online.
“We’ve seen a mixture of things happening,” he said.
“In some cases we’ve simply moved the auction online because we are confident we will still attract multiple bidders and then some clients have asked to push out their auctions by two weeks.”
The problem with extending a sale by any less than two weeks is the uncertainty around coronavirus lockdowns. Some agents even rushed forward their auction to Thursday night to beat the start of the lockdown and maintain the momentum they had already built.
Ray White chief executive Stephen Dullens said the majority of his bookings were happy to go ahead online.
“After what happened last year everyone is familiar with the online element and online auctions,” he told Domain.
“We have the ability to move things online very easily and so for us, it’s a matter of just putting that into effect.
“This is a bit of deja vu for most of us, so I think everyone is pretty prepared and ready to go online.”
Domain’s senior research analyst Nicola Powell actually said this Saturday was set to be the second-biggest weekend of the year for auction numbers after a busier than usual month of May.
“Obviously, this seven-day lockdown has changed this and I think as well as people postponing auctions and moving them online, many agents will have swiftly brought forward negotiations with buyers and you will have seen some properties being sold prior to auction,” she told Domain.
