Residential property buyers swooped on good-quality homes auctioned on Saturday but turned up their noses at the ambitious reserve prices set by some vendors.

Fickle buyer behaviour and a determination by many would-be purchasers not to overpay helped to once again push the city’s auction clearance rate below 60 per cent.

The metropolitan clearance rate was 56.8 per cent from 320 reported auctions, indicating that buyers regard the asking prices being pitched by nearly half of the current sellers as too steep.

There was a high rate of under-reporting by agents on Saturday, too. The results of 197 scheduled auctions, one-third of the total auction roll-call for the weekend, went unreported. A further 76 properties booked to go under the hammer were withdrawn.

But Sydney’s various property markets remain highly stratified, with some areas and property types doing better than others.

For example, well-located properties offering a “move straight in” turnkey solution to home hunters are tossing up some robust prices, especially in the inner suburbs.

In Paddington, a spacious balcony terrace with a 20-year-old but high-quality renovation at 32 Renny Street failed to reach its guide price of $3.4 million. The owners then tweaked their reserve and allowed the property to be called on the market at $3.315 million. It sold under the hammer for exactly that amount.

Four bidders registered for the auction of the four-bedroom home and all placed bids.

Laing & Simmons selling agent Michael Minogue said the successful purchaser, a family relocating from an apartment in the eastern suburbs, planned to move directly into the Paddington terrace.

“This was a particularly large property, north-facing in the rear with parking and in a clean and tidy condition,” he said. “The house was renovated in 1997 but it was in very good condition.”

Other large houses sold under competitive conditions before auction.

A contemporary, 2013-built house at 13 Alfred Street, Lilyfield, was due to be auctioned on Saturday by Pilcher Residential – Annandale but sold prior.

Selling agent Simon Pilcher said the home had a $3.4 million guide price but changed hands for $3.5 million after two families put in offers.

“We had two people who were very keen on the property, and both had been looking for over 12 months,” he said.

“This property had an enormous volume of spaces. The master bedroom had its own outside retreat with a spa and a day bed. There were so many features to the property that you wouldn’t normally find in a residential house so close to town.”

Increasingly, the wider metropolitan market is running at two speeds. A-grade properties (renovated, in superior streets, near schools and infrastructure) are sharply outperforming inferior alternatives, and the performance gap between properties of different standards is widening as 2018 rolls on.

Tighter bank lending practices are especially hitting debt-dependent mid-market buyers at the moment. The lower end of the market, below $1.2 million, and the upper-end, above about $3 million, are less subject to the ups and downs of lending practices because people frequently have more equity at these price points and need to borrow less to buy.

“The lower end of the scale and the upper end of the scale are still travelling well,” Mr Pilcher noted.

Meanwhile, the Professionals Ermington scored an upbeat sale with a dated house at 35 Murdoch Street, Ermington. The property sold at auction for $1,195,000 or $196,000 over reserve.

Agent Paul Tassone said there were eight registered and six active bidders for the home which sits on 563sqm.

As with many auctions at the moment, the bidding climbed slowly. It took five minutes before an opening bid of $750,000 was placed for the Ermington home. The bidding then went up in increments of $10,000 and $20,000 to $960,000, before several knockout bids were posted.