August 31st REA Insights Weekly Commercial Search Report, 2020

After hitting record heights, the volume of commercial property searches on realcommercial.com.au fell last week.

After a 14.5 per cent increase over the previous two weeks to record heights, for sale search volumes on realcommercial.com.au fell by -3.5 per cent last week.

For sale search volumes fell last week in all states except for Northern Territory (4.3%), with the largest declines being witnessed in Victoria (-8.1%) and Australian Capital Territory (-5.5%).

Northern Territory is also the only state/territory in which for sale searches remain at record highs, with New South Wales recording a marginal fall of -2.5 per cent, while Tasmania (-15.0%) and Victoria (-13.3%) have recorded the largest falls.

Across all states the volumes of for sale searches last week was higher than the same week last year and nationally the volume was 17.8 per cent higher.

The largest year-on-year increases in for sale searches have been seen in Northern Territory (92.1%) and Australian Capital Territory (80.3%) and the smallest have been in Victoria (5.1%) and New South Wales (17.2%).

Lease search volumes also fell last week.

After a 14.9 per cent increase over the previous two weeks they were -2.5 per cent lower last week, dragging them -11.4 per cent lower than their historic high.

Lease search volumes fell last week across all states, with the smallest falls in Australian Capital Territory (-0.1%) and Northern Territory (-1.0%) and the largest falls in Tasmania (-9.5%) and South Australia (-7.9%).

The volume of lease searches is now lower than its peak across all states, with Victoria (-29.5%) and Tasmania (-16.9%) recording the largest falls and Queensland (-7.0%) and Western Australia (-9.5%) recording the smallest.

Lease search volumes last week were 17.0 per cent higher than they were at the same time last year.

Victoria is the only state in which lease search volumes are lower than a year ago (-6.5%), while Tasmania (36.5%) and Northern Territory (31.0%) have recorded the largest increases.

While commercial search volumes fell last week, they remain higher than they were a year ago nationally and in most states.

As I have noted previously, I would expect commercial search volumes to remain elevated as businesses look for alternative accommodation in order to make savings on accommodation costs as the economy recovers from the current recession.