White Paper - June 2020

In the middle of winter, at a time when many communities were still facing restrictions and many of our customers were concerned about the property market, our sales results for June make for compelling reading.

Our residential Australian sales in June 2020 were up six per cent on last year at $2.4 billion. New South Wales alone was up 15 per cent. Queensland was the only state that experienced any material drop in overall sales activity.

Together with our New Zealand, commercial and rural networks, our June sales were up eight per cent at $3.72 billion. These results are something that every single one of our members can be very proud of.

The transition to a balanced market is firmly underway now and we are active and doing a lot of deals and listing volume is pretty much back up to a year ago.

Our auction results of the first week of July rewarded our customers that decided not to wait for spring. Not only did we average 4.2 registered bidders at our Australian auctions, and a 61 per cent national auction day clearance rate, it was on the back of a seven per cent increase in the number of auctions scheduled compared to the same week last year.

We believe the longer term outlook still remains highly uncertain and it would be reckless to try and predict what might happen.

What we can say though is that there is a lot of risk in the market as we look forward six to 12 months as government stimulus and banking support is likely to reduce. With strong buyer activity and less properties on the market for them to choose from than this time last year, we continue to ask the question, “Why would you wait until spring to sell?”

It’s also important to look back over 2019-20 as a whole as it was a truly incredible ride.

Our members sold an incredible $44.22 billion worth of property across our network in 2019-20, up 8.6 per cent on the prior year.

Just let that sink in.

Our members achieved this despite all the headwinds in the wake of the federal election, the bushfires and the COVID-19 global health pandemic with all its restrictions and challenges to our daily lives and trading.

This incredible year’s results are not far off our all time peak of $45.7 billion in 2017-18.

And here we are now into July.

The new fiscal year has dawned and we are off with some exciting momentum.

Like every year in our 118 year history, we begin with a commitment to make this year our best year ever. While we are continually reminded of the risks of the pandemic, we know that the market will remain very active whatever happens, as our customers will always need to buy, sell, rent and lease property. The past four months irrefutably proves this. Our role is to be relentless in serving this market and staying focused on giving our customers the best possible solutions.

We begin the new year in a very strong financial position. The size of our network has grown over the last 12 months. We have never had higher market share. Our corporate team is larger and with deeper skills than ever before. We remain ambitious for continuous improvement and growth.

Our partners at Loan Market also had an incredible June, setting new records.

It's loan lodgements were $1.57 billion, approvals at $1.13 billion and settlements a whopping $1.11 billion. Both approvals and settlements are new records.