Fabian

Look, it's actually quite a controversial topic because it can give the market a false outlook.

Typically, the market reads a clearance rate as what sells under the hammer.

But a lot of data doesn't get reported because agents haven't, A, picked up their phone, or B, they're just lazy and reporting afterwards.

Now, that can really skew the data.

A huge chunk goes missing every single weekend, maybe even 30% of the scheduled auctions.

But a lot of those auctions are still being negotiated.

So for me personally, we need to include in the clearance rate sales under auction conditions.

That's three days before the auction and of course the auction and three days after.

Otherwise, why have auction conditions in place?

So you see, different bodies collect different data based on who has actually reported their auctions.

I would love to personally see two clearance rates, one for under the hammer and one for an adjusted one on the Thursday morning following the three business days to allow those auctions that passed in to have been negotiated successfully.

That would then tell us the true number and also tell us whether there really is a confidence issue or there's obviously still great confidence in the market to buy unconditionally.

And I'm pretty confident, Craig, you would see the clearance rates jump up significantly if we saw that number.

And I know that because we can see it internally in our business.

Unfortunately, though, it would just give the media a slow news day to report successful results.

So I think they're done with that since that post-pandemic boom.

Now they need a new talking point, don't they?

It certainly does.

And it's very important that agents actually start looking internally at their own clearance rates.

And I think it's going to take time for agents to actually start to get