Recent statistics would certainly point the way to an improving ecomomy with the March quarter recording a 0.6% growth following a 0.9% growth, however the sober reality as Bernard Hickey describes it, is, in his judgment a Clayton’s Recovery – the recovery you’re having when you are not having a economic recovery. The reality is that for people caught with a large debt burden then this “recovery” is not feeling too good and the latest data for mortgagee sales certainly supports this view.
Over the first 4 months of 2010 a total of 765 properties have been sold as mortgagee sales – where the owner has defaulted on the terms of the lending agreement and the lender as the mortgagor has sort to recover as much as the debt as possible through a mortgagee sale. This total of 765 compares to 726 for the same period in 2009 and 246 in the first 4 months of 2008 before the Great Recession began.
Whilst the scale of mortgagee sales show little signs of abating the rate of growth seen over the past few years appears to be slowing and the outlook should be brighter in the medium term. A key indicator of the future scale of mortgagee sales is the inventory of mortgagee properties featured on Realestate.co.nz. The chart below tracks the weekly total from 2007 to the present day. Currently there are 279 mortgagee properties comprising homes, units, apartments and townhouses as well as lifestyle properties.
The chart certainly highlights that the peak of the market for new listings of mortgagee properties was back in 2008 & 2009, the calmer days of 2007 are still a long way off.
Another key indicator of the mortgagee market is the degree of searching on the web for mortgagee properties as an indicator of demand from investors or general buyers looking to capitalise on stress in the market to negotiate for a property. The website of Realestate.co.nz tracks all keywords used on the site – some 500+ every week with over 8,000 weekly specific keyword searches. Amongst the most actively searched over the past couple of years have been the phrases around mortgagee property – mortgagee sale, mortgagee auction, mortgagee. The chart below tracks these weekly searches and matches the volume to the weekly inventory of mortgagee property on the market.