Carrington Clarke

Now,

The preliminary rate, and we say preliminary because we will see a final rate later in the week, is sitting at 60.2%.

Now, last week it was 60.7%.

Last week, the revised rate, so the final rate, ended up being around 55%.

Now, the usual rule of thumb, as I understand it, is people say if it's above 60% clearance rate final, then it looks like prices are on the rise.

If it's below that, it looks like prices are coming down.

And that seems to be what we're seeing at the moment, that buyers are sitting on the sidelines more than they were at the start of this year.

They're concerned about what's happening with interest rates.

They're concerned about the outlook with the war in the Middle East.

Still no major progress towards peace talks.

What did you make of this number?

And more generally, where do you see the property market currently sitting ahead of this crucial decision by the Reserve Bank about whether or not to hike interest rates again?

The context is so critical, isn't it?

So we had, according to Cotality, over the past year, dwelling prices in Australia still grew almost 10%.

I mean, that's an extraordinarily high rate of growth in a market that was, by most measures, when you compare incomes to how much a house or an apartment costs,

are very, very expensive.

And so that was the kind of starting point before we saw kind of everything shift, didn't we?

We first saw inflation numbers running too hot, so the Reserve Bank decided to hike interest rates.

You've obviously seen the war in the Middle East.

That's created even greater inflationary pressure because of the oil shock.