Real Estate Wrap with Leanne Pilkington | 22 April 2025

Real Estate Wrap with Leanne Pilkington

Welcome to this week’s Real Estate Wrap with Leanne Pilkington, CEO of Laing+Simmons and President of the Real Estate Institute of Australia.

Easter weekend saw a quieter real estate market in NSW, with auction volumes taking the expected holiday dip.

Key highlights:

•  Just 358 auctions were held over the weekend, down from 1,282 the week prior, reflecting the annual Easter lull.
• Preliminary clearance rate sits at 69%, continuing a 5-week trend under the 70% mark.
• Standout Suburbs: Inner South-West Sydney saw a stellar 92% clearance rate, while North Sydney & Hornsby dipped to just 7%.
• Regional results:
  • Central Coast: 1/4
  • Blue Mountains: 4/6
  • Newcastle: 7/19
  • Illawarra: 3/6

While the market took a breather, there’s optimism that activity will lift post-Easter—though it may not fully bounce back to pre-holiday levels until spring. The seasonal shift always plays a big role, but so do buyer sentiment and supply levels.

Stay informed with our weekly updates.

Transcript:

Hey everyone, Leanne Pilkington with you for the Real Estate Wrap, week ending April 21. Hope you all had a wonderful long weekend. How fast did it go? My goodness, can’t even believe it. Anyway, this weekend, 358 properties went up for auction. Now that compares to last Easter, it was 414. So a little bit lower than last Easter. 67.9% preliminary clearance rate, which is a little better than last week. However, it’s the fifth week in row of sub 70% prelim clearances. Last weekend, 1,282 properties at a final clearance rate of 58.5%. Same weekend last year, which was not Easter. 602 properties at 65.1% clearance rate. On the Central Coast, one from four. Blue Mountains, four from six. Newcastle, seven from 19. And Illawarra, three from six. Our highest clearance rate was 92% in the inner southwest, which is awesome. Lowest across Sydney was 55.7%, which was North Sydney and Hornsby. Now we expect that post -Easter activity will increase, but the post -Easter activity is never as much as a pre -Easter activity until we get to spring. So it’ll be interesting to see if this year’s same. Have a wonderful week. Another short one. See you next week. Bye.