Clearance rates on property auctions are testing boom time peaks, smart money buying into the story.
A clearance rate on Saturday of 84.8 per cent in Melbourne's inner East, and 81.8 per cent in Sydney's eastern suburbs and 85.2 per cent in Ryde (meaning mostly Chinese buyers) are a marker that this footy final season, housing is bracing to pop.
These are buyer cohorts less constrained by credit rationing and overwhelmingly working in the world of financial services.
There were just under 2000 capital city homes taken to auction this week, an increase in volumes of 21 per cent over the week, CoreLogic said in its Weekend Market Summary.
"The higher volumes returned a preliminary auction clearance rate of 74 per cent, increasing on last week's final result of 72.8 per cent.
"While we did see a pickup in auction activity this week, volumes remain lower than one year ago; over the same week last year around 400 more properties were taken to auction, although almost half of these failed to sell."
"Across the individual property types, the last five weeks has seen houses consistently outperformed units in terms of clearance rate with 74.9 per cent of houses selling at auction this week, while across the unit market a lower 71.2 per cent preliminary clearance rate was recorded."