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It’s a fair bet that real estate agents would have advised sellers to avoid 21 May for planned auctions for obvious election distraction reasons.

As things stand, though, the property market has already lost its sizzle, at least in Sydney and Melbourne.

Brigid Delaney colourfully described the shifting mood over this past weekend – the first test since the RBA lifted its cash rate last Tuesday.

CoreLogic has firmed up the clearance details further this morning, and it’s not looking promising if you were aiming to sell at the top of the market:

In the past week, just over 2,000 homes went to auction across the capital cities, with Melbourne and Sydney making up about three-quarters of the total, CoreLogic said.

That tally was down a quarter from the previous week, and a third lower than this time a year ago.

Of the 1,611 results collected so far, 64.7% were successful, once again overtaking the previous week as the lowest preliminary clearance rate recorded so far this year,” the data group says.

A week earlier, the revised figure came in at 62.9%, so the preliminary clearance rate could drop below 60%, which would be the first time since August 2021 during the depths of the east coast Covid lockdowns.

Sydney, the most expensive major city in Australia (and right up there, globally), the conditions were worse than the average. This past week’s auctions were off 43% from a year ago, and down about a third on the previous week.

The harbour city’s preliminary clearance rate of 58.7%will drop a few percentage points or more. Excluding a pre-Australia Day week in January (more sausages), this past week looks like being Sydney’s worst clearance rate since April 2020.

If confidence is beginning to evaporate already after one RBA rate rise, you have to wonder at what it will look like if investors are even partly on the money:

UNSW researchers like Hal Pawson and Chris Martin have made the point about how much we’ve managed to hitch our economy’s fortunes to the property market. Looks like a rough ride might be ahead …