{"id":494237,"date":"2026-06-25T03:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T03:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/494237\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T03:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T03:49:09","slug":"markets-live-unemployment-rate-falls-to-4-4pc-in-may-down-from-4-5pc-in-april","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/494237\/","title":{"rendered":"Markets live: Unemployment rate falls to 4.4pc in May, down from 4.5pc in April"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The property market research group, Cotality, has tabulated the final results from the weekend&#8217;s home auctions and found that clearance rates have only been this low three times in the past 15 years.<\/p>\n<p>The final average clearance rate across the nation came in at 42.3%, 6 percentage points lower than the week before and 6.2 percentage points lower than the corresponding weekend a year ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">&#8220;The last time clearance rates fell to this level was 26 April 2020 (41.1%) a time when the Australian auction market was substantially disrupted by strict social distancing policies and a sharp deterioration in market confidence, resulting in a breakdown in normal auction activity,&#8221; Cotality economist Annabelle Mezieres said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">&#8220;The downward trend in clearance rates has been apparent since mid-February, but a sub-50% reading indicates a wide gap has opened between buyer and seller pricing expectations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">&#8220;Since the commencement of Cotality&#8217;s auction results in 2008, clearance rates have been this low across only three periods previously: in 2011 and 2018 as the housing market was navigating a downturn, and during the early onset of the COVID-19 pandemic when the auction dynamic was severely disrupted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">&#8220;Additionally, the 4-week rolling average indicates that the weighted average clearance rate is trending downward, suggesting the decline is not merely due to a slow week but reflects a broader trend that has been unfolding since earlier this year.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The property market research group, Cotality, has tabulated the final results from the weekend&#8217;s home auctions and found&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[4231,4232,4236,138,7011,4234,219,4238,4237,220,10992,111,139,4235,69,7420,1820,643,4233],"class_list":["post-494237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-asx","tag-australian-dollar","tag-bitcoin","tag-business","tag-dollar","tag-dow-jones","tag-economy","tag-live-blog","tag-live-update","tag-markets","tag-nasdaq","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nyse","tag-nz","tag-sp","tag-share-market","tag-stocks","tag-wall-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}