The auction sales rate declined to 36% in March from 41% in February

March is usually the busiest month of the year for auction activity and March this year appears no different, with interest.co.nz monitoring the auctions of 2189 residential properties around the country over the month.

That's up 23% compared to the 1775 residential property auctions monitored in February. So with an average of more than 500 properties a week going under the hammer, the auctioneers have been kept busy.

Unfortunately one of the most notable features of the March auctions was a steady decline in the sales rate.

In February, 41% of the properties offered at the auctions monitored by interest.co.nz were sold under the hammer.

But in March, just 793 of the 2189 properties offered were sold under the hammer, giving an overall sales rate of 36%. The sales appears likely to decline further, because by the end of March it had dropped to just 33%.

If the sales rate falls any further it will mean less than a third of properties will be selling under the hammer, with the rest mostly being passed in for sale by negotiation post auction, which can be a drawn out process for both buyers and sellers.

The auction rooms are expected to be quieter over April, because the month starts with an early Easter break followed three weeks later by the Anzac long weekend, with school holidays in between.

All of those things tend to put a bit of a dampener on auction activity, which along with the current economic turmoil could see the number of properties being offered drop significantly.

Details of the individual properties offered at all of the auctions monitored by interest.co.nz, including the prices of the properties that sold, are available on our Residential Auction Results page.