Sydney Posts Back-To-Back Record Clearance Rates
Another autumn weekend of extraordinary results.
By Terry Christodoulou
Mon, Mar 22, 2021 9:09am
< 1 min
< 1 min
Auction markets across the country continued to record extraordinary results on March 20, reflecting unprecedented buyer competition.
Despite the dreary weather, the Sydney auction market posted back-to-back record results, exceeding 90% for the third time in four weekends with a clearance rate of 92.4%.
The result is a stark contrast to the coronavirus impacted market of the same weekend last year which reported 64.9% clearance rate.
Auction numbers were higher in Sydney on Saturday with 856 reported, compared to the 716 listed last weekend. Sydney recording a median price for houses sold at auction on the weekend of $1,610,500, 24.7% higher than the same weekend in 2020.
Melbourne’s market also proved strong with a season-high effort of 82.1%, up from last weekend’s 81.5%.
A reported 1117 homes were listed for auction, higher than the previous weekend’s 978 but lower than 1184 reported over the same weekend of 2020.
Melbourne’s median house price sold at auction on the weekend was $980,000 which is 6.8% higher than the 918,000 recorded over the same weekend last year.
Listings increased in all capitals compared to last weekend (March 13), with the exception of Canberra. It’s expected that an influx of listings will flood the market at the pre-Easter super Saturday next weekend.
MOST POPULAR
The Australian leather house has opened an immersive four-day pop-up in Manhattan, unveiling its Bloom Collection and redefining what a product launch can look like.
Following the successful launch of its Palais Collection, MAISON de SABRÉ has unveiled a new modular handbag system offering more than 720 styling combinations.
Related Stories
A five-bedroom Palo Alto home designed by Steven Ehrlich is listed for $44 million, making it the city’s most expensive listing. Built around a dramatic concrete spine, the home features four courtyards and a pool.
By E.B. Solomont
Thu, Sep 24, 2026 3 min
3 min
For years, tech entrepreneur Asher Waldfogel and his wife, Helyn MacLean, dreamed of building a modern house in Palo Alto, Calif.
The couple, however, worried about clashing with the Mediterranean-style architecture typically associated with their neighborhood of Old Palo Alto.
So they tapped architect Steven Ehrlich to create a design that paid homage to its surroundings with stucco, mahogany and titanium zinc cladding. They spent $20 million over several years building the house, completed in 2005.
Now looking to be closer to their adult daughter on the East Coast, they are putting the five-bedroom home on the market for $44 million—the most expensive listing in Palo Alto.
Waldfogel is an angel investor who co-founded Redback Networks, a telecommunications-equipment company. MacLean previously had a career in fundraising.
The couple purchased the roughly 0.4-acre site for $7.1 million in 2000 and demolished a circa-1930s Spanish Colonial home. The house they built pinwheels around a central staircase. It has 7,900 square feet of livable space, with four distinct courtyards and a pool.
A key feature of the home is a cast-in-place concrete wall, or spine, that is two stories high and about 80 feet long. “There’s a little bit of controlled chaos in what comes out of the form,” unlike a perfectly uniform surface, Waldfogel said. “If you want that, you do it in plastic.”
Waldfogel said he and his wife are thinking about the next phase of life now that their daughter is grown, although they have not decided where they will move. They also have a home in Sun Valley, Idaho.
“Right now we’re just trying to emotionally let go and decide what to do next,” he said.
Palo Alto, an epicenter of venture capital and tech startups in Silicon Valley, is home to some of the country’s biggest tech titans. Sales volume and prices are rising, with a median sale price of $3.5 million for the three months ending in August, up 5.8% year-over-year, according to real-estate brokerage Redfin.
Arthur Sharif of Sotheby’s International Realty—San Francisco Brokerage has the listing.
