This edition of Auction Insights looks at the overall performance of commercial auctions across the Ray White Commercial network for the 2017 calendar year, as well as a focus on the transactions which have occurred during the fourth quarter of 2017, being October to December.
This fourth quarter period saw 60 commercial listings with Auction campaigns brought to market across the Commercial network (in line with the 60 recorded last quarter and slightly behind the 63 recorded during the same period in 2016). These auctions yielded a robust selling rate, with strong clearance of 90.00% recorded with a total volume of sales of $110.432 million. The total 2017 calendar year saw $426.795 million change hands in auctions which represents 216 sales across a total of 239 auctions (a selling rate of 90.78%). This highlights a vast increase in the number of commercial auctions as the 2016 calendar year yielded $214.177 million sales represented by 166 total auctions with a selling rate of 87.35%.
Overall demand for commercial assets were high in 2016 and continued into 2017 with a strong end to the year. These trends look to continue into 2018 with both owners and buyer expectations adjusting to lower yields for quality investment stock, while changes to some financing regulations have slightly dampened some of this demand across some markets. The competitive auction environment has resulted in the bulk of sales (74.07%) sold under the hammer during the 2017 calendar year with Auction conditions with a further 18.52% sold prior. We saw in early 2017 that the sold prior to auction numbers slow down, however with urgency coming back in the market and the rush for some buyers to purchase prior to the end of the year we saw some pick up in this prior to activity. The remaining 7.41% concluding shortly after the auction campaign when owner and buyer price beliefs become more aligned, most notably for development site assets which have seen demand levels subdued.
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