Take auction clearance rates, one of the market’s leading indicators, for example. Over the weekend they showed the first signs of softening, although they haven’t fallen significantly yet.
According to Domain economist Trent Wiltshire in Business Insider, “the impact so far has been pretty muted. Clearance rates have been down a touch but they’ll still be pretty solid numbers when they’re finalised later this week, probably ending up around 70 per cent in Sydney and 65 per cent in Melbourne”.
Although Wiltshire said it’s too early to tell how the virus might affect prices, he said it’s reasonable to expect a marked slowdown in sales for a period, as the coronavirus forces prospective homebuyers to put their search on hold.
“We’re headed into the Easter school holiday period as well, which is typically a quiet few weeks for the market, so it’s going to be really difficult to track the impact though over the next month or so anyway,” Wiltshire said.
The RBA has cut interest rates to a record low of 0.25 per cent in an emergency meeting today, which should help hold the market up.
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