Australian Property Monitors (APM) has been accused of providing incomplete data on the weekend auction market in Sydney.
Writing in an opinion piece for the Financial Review, analyst Mark Bayley suggested that the results published by APM, which are regularly published in the Age, are biased.
He said: "Auction clearance rates should be transparent, real and representative of what happens at the auctions on any given Saturday; at the moment, auction clearance rates are anything but."
The concern is that APM fails to report on all the properties that go up for auction each weekend, which could skew the results. For weeks, APM has shown that Sydney's clearance rates have consistently exceeded 80 per cent.
Since then, the Fact Check unit at ABC has published an article on the clearance rates based on data from APM and RP Data.
Others have also weighed in on the debate by comparing clearance rate results with other data. SQM Research director Louis Christopher noted on Twitter that Residex has more complete results that show clearance rates in Sydney are in their 70s.
Posted by Ravin Chatlani