187 Withdrawals: Buyers Haven’t Vanished

187 homes were withdrawn across Sydney and Melbourne on Saturday, and that is the number hiding inside this weekend’s auction wrap. - Sydney: 53% preliminary clearance from 311 reported results out of 564 scheduled - Melbourne: 55% from 464 reported out of 692 scheduled - 187 withdrawals are counted as unsold, pulling the headline lower - Cash rate remains 4.35%, with the next RBA decision 10 days away on Wednesday, 5 August The real story is not that buyers have disappeared. It is that buyers have become more selective, while some vendors are choosing not to test price discovery. We also look at two tight-supply markets with strong yields and low vacancy: Woolguru and Berserker. Get the free Top Five Markets Report: https://ripe.house/brief-withdrawn Disclaimer: This video is general information only and does not take into account your personal objectives, financial situation or needs.

187 homes were pulled out of the room before they had to face it. That is how many auctions were withdrawn across Sydney and Melbourne yesterday, Saturday, the 25th of July. 93 in Sydney, 94 in Melbourne, not passed in, not sold cheap, withdrawn. Vendors deciding they would rather not find out what their house is worth. So here is the Sunday wrap. Sydney, a preliminary clearance rate of 53% from 311 reported results out of 564 scheduled. Melbourne, 55% from 464 reported out of 692 scheduled. And remember how that number is built. Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold when the clearance rate is calculated. So 187 vendor decisions are sitting inside those two percentages, pushing them down around the rest of the board. The cash rate is still 4.35% with the next reserve bank decision 10 days away on Wednesday, the 5th of August. Sydney's median house price has fallen to 1.73 million. Melbourne just recorded its steepest quarterly drop in four years. Brisbane unit prices fell for the first time in three years. And in Perth, a new report is calling a turning tide in buying conditions. That is the weekend. Now here is the part the headlines are getting wrong. The story everyone is running with this morning is that buyers have evaporated. And the quote driving it is a good one. A rain and horn auctioneer with 30 years in the industry stood in a Lane Cove apartment yesterday and said, this is the worst I have seen it. And that is taking into account the GFC. I think we're at pricing from four years ago. Now I'm not going to tell you he is wrong about how it feels in the room, but look at what actually happened in the same city on the same day. That Lane Cove apartment guide 790,000, reserve 785,000, sold at 785,000. One bidder, one bid cleared. In Zetland, a two bedroom unit guided at 1 million, reserve 1.15 million, drew four registered bidders, two of them active and sold at 1.15 million. That is 150,000 above guide with competition. And in Waverton, a three bedroom apartment guided at 2.2 million with a reserve of 2.4 million drew nothing. Zero bids, 12 people in the room and the agent reckoned half of them were the neighbours. Three properties, same market, same weekend, two cleared, one drew nobody. Buyers have not evaporated. Buyers have become discriminating. They have stopped paying for vendor optimism. And the one that failed was the one asking 200,000 above its own guide. And this is the bid I really want you to sit with because it changes what the number means. 187 withdrawals is not a demand event. It is a supply event. Every withdrawn listing is a vendor choosing not to discover their price. Those homes do not vanish. They queue, they come back. And while they queue, they are dragging the reported clearance rate down because they are counted as unsold. So the headline reads as a verdict on buyers when a large slice of it is actually a verdict on sellers. If this is the kind of read you want on your Sunday morning rather than the panic version, hit subscribe. You will be first in line every day. So if the capital city clearance numbers are really a negotiation between vendor hope and buyer patience, where is our system actually pointing? Two markets flagged overnight and neither of them sells under the hammer. First, Woolguru in Queensland, Southern Townsville, the industrial and defence corridor. This is the number one ranked suburb in the country on our R-score right now, 100th percentile population, 4,570. Median sold price, $