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Property buyers continue to favour the web over print when searching

Posted on: August 24th, 2010 | Filed in Buying / Selling a home, Featured, Online marketing

Family viewing laptop There is a fundamental disconnect in the real estate industry today between where the industry advertises and where the audience of buyers are researching.

The latest data from this Nielsen survey highlights this in stark relief. Currently around 90% of the dollars spent by the industry (somewhere over $2,000,000 per week) is spent on traditional print media – specialist magazines as well as national and local newspapers.

That spend though is not relevant to where buyers are researching the property market. The Nielsen survey asked respondents to select which of 15 different mediums (print, online, signs, magazines etc) they had used in the past week to assist in researching real estate. Respondents were able to tick as many forms of media as they liked.

The results this year are staggering as is the trend of the 4 years that the survey has been undertaken – this point is made as whilst some may judge that as the survey is undertaken online there may be a bias. However you judge the methodology, the trends are not to be ignored or dismissed.

National newspapers have now fallen to a level where just 1 in 4 of people surveyed had used them to research in the past week. Back in 2007 it was just half of all people surveyed, in 2008 it fell to 43% and last year it was down to less than 1 in 3. So in the space of just 3 years the proportion of people in the survey relying on national newspapers to research real estate has halved.

Specialist real estate magazines have equally suffered a decline over the years. In 2007 they were judged by 6 out of 10 respondents as being a part of property researching in the past week. By 2008 they had fallen to 55%, 2009 saw a further fall to below half of all those surveyed and finally this year they have fallen again to just 45%.

Over the same period the web has been in the ascendancy. Even back in 2006 with the first survey, the web was judged by 7 out of 10 to be a valuable source of research in the past week. In 2010 that ascendancy and supremacy has grown. Heading the pack are specialist real estate websites of which Realestate.co.nz and Trade me property are the two dominant sites, this category is now judged by 8 out of 10 respondents as a valuable source of research in the past week. Closely behind are company websites (64%) and search engines (42%).

Not only are real estate websites chosen more often as a source of property research the amount of time that people are spending on them continues to grow. For specialist real estate websites the weekly total is now over 3 hours (197 minutes) up from 172 minutes last year. Company websites and search engines are both up and both exceed 2 hours per week. The print publications in the real estate arena on the other hand are falling – national newspapers now account for less than an hour per week and specialist real estate magazines just over an hour a week (down from 77 to 76 minutes).

The trends presented in this Nielsen survey truly reflect usage by property buyers. More and more these days real estate professionals rely heavily on lead generation and online marketing of their clients’ properties from the web – on specialist real estate websites as well as their own company websites.

With close to 90% of all NZ’ers now accessing the web and broadband penetration exceeding half of the population, not to mention the projected rise in mobile internet, the future for the real estate industry will ever more be online – the question is clearly going to be – for how much longer can the industry afford to keep pumping all that money into print media?

Note: The Nielsen Real Estate Market Report is based on a website-intercept survey on New Zealand real estate websites conducted during May and June 2010 with a sample size of 1,225 respondents and a margin of error of 2.86%.

Sellers turn to trusted agents to facilitate sale – results of a new survey

Posted on: August 20th, 2010 | Filed in Buying / Selling a home, Featured, Online marketing

house for sale Jan 2010 The emergence of the web seemed to transform the landscape for buying and selling everything, including real estate; and certainly the principles of the democratic web have had a dramatic and permanent effect on the real estate market.

Most noticeable among this has been the richer and more comprehensive information available on the web – thankfully long gone are the days that an agent posted a single photo and a brief description for the property – nowadays listings are often comprehensive summaries with 20+ photos, videos, neighbourhood profiles and every facet of information as well as a clear price indication; all valuable for prospective buyers.

However as with this change have come the challenge to the real estate industry of private sellers leveraging the reach and cost effective advertising of the web to seek to secure a transaction and thereby save the commission fees charged by agents. Certainly the stories abound of the perceived benefits of DIY real estate. Just last month Fair Go featured a piece on private sales and only in the past week a business writer from the NZ Herald highlighted great success.

Whilst there is no doubt that private sellers are actively promoting their properties seeking to find buyers the latest findings of the annual Nielsen Real Estate Market Report shows that private selling may well be loosing some of its lustre.

As part of the Nielsen survey which is undertaken through an online questionnaire respondents are asked about their intentions when it comes to selling a property. In this latest survey the respondents who said that they would definitely sell privately totaled just 11%, a further one third of people stated that they would probably list with a real estate agent, but would give a private sale a go first. The balance of 47% – close to half of all respondents stated that they would definitely list with a licensed real estate agent.

The 11% of those surveyed indicating that they would definitely sell privately can be compared to each of the past 3 years when the question has been asked in the survey. Each year the intention has declined from the starting point in 2007 at 17% a steady decline totaling 35% has been witnessed to the current level of 11%.

At the same time over the same time period the proportion of respondents who have stated that they intend to definitely list with a real estate agent has grown from 35% in 2007 to now represent close to half of all respondents at 47%. Over viewing the results of the survey for the past 4 years shows that back in 2007 the sellers in the market were evenly split 3 ways – one third clearly judging that an agent is the route to sell, a third made up of definitely sell privately combined with the “don’t knows” and a final third uncertain as to an agent or doing it themselves. Today 3 years later nearly half of the respondents are recognising that agents can be trusted in such uncertain times; with another third still unsure, but probably going to rely on an agent.

Clearly the pendulum has continued swinging back towards agents as the complexity, litigation exposure and the ever present challenges of today’s buyer’s market environment leave people questioning why they would want to take on the role of self employed agent as well as their current day job.

It is interesting to note how coincidental it is that in an earlier analysis of the property listings market undertaken earlier this year 11.4% of all listings on the market were identified as private listings and similarly an often quoted statistic is is the estimate of total private sales (no corroborative data available) at c. 10%.

Property investment loses its appeal – results of a new survey

Posted on: August 18th, 2010 | Filed in Buying / Selling a home, Featured, Property Investing

Investment property Aug 2010 Since the budget announcements in May as to the treatment of investment properties there has been extensive speculation as to the likely reaction of the investor segment of the property market.

The market both prior to May and subsequent to the announcement has shown virtually no movement (certainly no positive movement). The seasonally adjusted volumes for this year as represented in the chart (blue bars) track a very static level of around 4,500 per month well down on 2009 (green) and ominously close to 2008 (red).

This sales data from the Real Estate Institute unfortunately provides no insight into the type of property purchased. However a recently released survey can now provide some valuable insight.

The annual Nielsen Real Estate Market Report 2010 now in its fifth year for which Realestate.co.nz is the primary sponsor has in the latest release highlighted a major flight of investors from the market comparing 2010 with prior years.

The survey, which is undertaken through an online intercept questionnaire, measures many aspects of the property buying and selling process. When it came to asking about buying intentions of the 1,225 survey respondents, it showed that their intention to buy an investment property had slumped by 40% in a year. Last year 1 in 4 of all those surveyed said that their intention was to buy an investment property. Just 12 months later when this survey was undertaken in May/June of this year that intention had slumped to just 1 in 7 – just 15%; the lowest level seen in the past 4 years of this annual survey.

Matched to this very clear intention of investment buyers was the fact that those who owned investment property were now far more likely to hold rather than sell – this is likely to be a clear factor in the slowing of the property market. Holders of investment property in the survey showed a 42% decline in intention to sell.

Another aspect to the investor profile in the market is the likelihood that investors will target private sellers who they perceive as offering great deals in this “buyer’s market” – in the space of the last year there has been a 24% increase of intention by property investors to seek out private sellers as a source of property investment – 41% of investment buyers stated that they would prefer to buy privately.

Vineyards for sale – a perspective of the market of the past few years

Posted on: August 17th, 2010 | Filed in Businesses for Sale, Featured

The NZ wine industry is worth around $1 billion a year in exports, a staggering increase from just $168 million at the start of the decade. There are around 643 wineries across the country and this total has witnessed a significant increase over the decade from just 358. These statistics are part of a very detailed annual report produced by the NZ Winegrowers .

Whilst it is recognised that there is not a perfect correlation between vineyards and wineries, the data we collect from the website of Realestate.co.nz can provide an insight into this important industry from the perspective of when and how vineyards are marketed for sale. The website provides a detailed analysis of activity across the breadth of the real estate market going back to the beginning of 2007.

Within this expansive phase of the last decade there has been a steady stream of transactions as vineyards have been bought and sold. In the past three and a half years some 305 vineyards have been advertised for sale on the website of Realestate.co.nz under the Farms section and now on the specialist website of www.nzfarms.co.nz .

At this time there are 76 vineyards on the market. Not the highest level over the period as can been seen from the chart below but higher than inventory during 2007, when economic conditions were more favourable and business finance somewhat easier to hand.

Vineyards tend not to sell that quickly and that is why the average time on the website has been just under 9 months across all of these listings over this period.

In terms of where these vineyards are located the majority have come onto the market in the Marlborough region (44%) followed by Hawkes Bay (19%), Central Otago (17%) region. The chart below contrasts this regional listing focus to the reported 2009 data of regional location of wineries.

In terms of listed prices – ranking all of the listed vineyards from most expensive sees all of the Top 10 feature Marlborough vineyards ranging in price from $10m to $30m. Fully 70% of all the vineyards marketed over the past 3 and a half years have been priced at over $1m. Currently the most expensive vineyard on the web is this 71ha winery and vineyard operation in the Blenheim areas with just over 54ha of planted vines, together with a purpose built winery. The price $18m.

Facts on the volume of property sales

Posted on: August 9th, 2010 | Filed in Buying / Selling a home, Featured, Media commmentary

The headlines today were focused to what is variously called a “stalled housing market” or the “Do nothing” housing market. However as is often the case, it is really important to look beyond the headline and rhetoric, and examine the facts.

The housing market has slowed enormously in the past year as measured by sales volumes. The trusted and consistent statistics for property sales come from REINZ. The Real Estate Institute collect sales data from all licensed real estate agents across the country on a monthly basis to provide their monthly report. Somewhere around 90% of all properties sold in NZ are managed by licensed agents giving the Real Estate Institute a very accurate representation of the current market transacted in the past month.

The latest data to hand from REINZ is for June 2010. In that month 4,575 property sales were recorded – down 24% from June 2009, however up 6% on the June 2008 sales results. For the first 6 months of 2010 a total of 29,844 properties were sold, as compared to 34,169 in the same period of 2009, a fall of 13%.

Clearly the table above shows the market in a very low state of activity, and potentially July sales figures could show a further year on year decline when the July figures are published on the 13th August, however what was most interesting in the articles on the market today was the quote by QV.co.nz Research Director Jonno Ingerson

“The number of house sales in recent months has dropped around one third from the same time last year, and is also around one third below the long term average. We are now approaching similar levels of sales as during 2008 at the height of the recession”

The quote is very interesting as it was not backed up with any factual sales data, nor has QV in the past referred to sales data. QV undertake their analysis of property prices based on Land Transfer documentation, this data clearly includes sales stats, however as the data set of these recorded sales is based on settlements rather than unconditional transaction records the data tends to cover an extended period which may span a couple of months given variable settlement terms.

To enable people to make informed decisions as to the state of the property market requires accurate information, if QV has a more accurate and up to date insight into the property market it would be great to see this information, especially if it does highlight sales down by 33%. I will naturally be very keen to anlayse and share this new transaction data on Unconditional, so I look forward to a response from QV to help provide insight if this data.

How best to promote your property to attract buyers?

Posted on: August 6th, 2010 | Filed in Agent Tips, Buying / Selling a home, Featured, Online marketing

There would not be many days go by when this question is not asked of me by friends and more importantly real estate agents. I am also sure it is a key question asked of almost all agents by vendors.

The reason why I believe that this issue is gaining greater focus is a convergence of market and media.

The property market is alive.. but not as yet firing on all cylinders – this year is beginning to look like a 65,000 sale year – as compared to last year which was a 69,000 sale year (but of course a long way away from 2003 which was a 120,000 sale year). This slow pace of sales is resulting in a high inventory of unsold houses on the market – today some 56,844 listings for properties for sale are featured on the website, equating to over 11 months of equivalent sales. The market therefore is tough for sellers – raising a property’s profile when there are so many others on the market is a challenge.

The other factor is media – the facts are clear and the trend is undeniable – more people, more of the time search online for property for sale. There will come a time when everyone will use online – today it is close to 80%. That does not mean that print advertising is dead, it just means it is not so relevant anymore and is no longer a necessity. The web is therefore the prime media for searching and finding property. However there is an interesting aspect of the web that is its greatest benefit and and at the same time its greatest challenge.

As companies and individuals have found over the years the democratisation of the web means the advantages of scale are removed and everyone can promote themselves and their products and services to the 1.3 billion people connected online in our world. So the issue is no longer one of being online, it is about being visible and being found online. In the context of real estate listings online it is the question of how to stand out from the crowd – to be the “Tall Poppy’.

Everyone of the 1,800+ suburbs across NZ has an average 31 properties on the market – all such properties have anxious vendors keen to see how capable real estate agents address the issue of creating standout in this online world. The answer is that the smartest agents are already preempting this question from vendors and add into the marketing proposal a Premium Featured Listing on Realestate.co.nz and similar offerings on other websites. These standout adverts ensure your property is seen by prospective buyers who can’t fail to see the impact these premium spots offer.

On Realestate.co.nz Premium Featured Adverts are restricted to just 3 per suburb and appear at the top of each suburb page. In this way the listing sequence of the results is not disturbed which from research we know is a serious no-no! As well as this exclusive featuring on the chosen suburb page the property is also featured in the district and region pages as well as one of 6 properties featured on the home page in rotation.

The results of this scale of advertising are significant – on average this type of advertising raises daily viewings of a listing by 10 times – so a normal 12 views a day turns into 120 a day. The adverts are featured for 14 days and clearly in that time the property is likely to be seen well over 2,000 times. To see the actual impact try clicking on the home page and review the daily traffic for any listing by checking out the viewing stats through the link marked “Property viewed xx times”.

The cost of this Premium Featured Advert is just $250 (inc GST) for 2 full weeks – compare that to the typical print advert which barely lasts for a day or so before falling victim to the recycling bin whilst the online advert is working hard 24 hrs a day for 14 days – added to which you know exactly what you get in the true number of viewings from online – facts impossible to glean from a print advert of a property.

Fancy trying this impactful advertising for your property – tell your agent what you want and he can arrange with us, or if you like, contact us and we will arrange through your agent.

NZ Property Report – July 2010

Posted on: August 1st, 2010 | Filed in Featured, NZ Property Report

The July 2010 NZ Property Report published by Realestate.co.nz provides an insight into the state of the New Zealand property market as measured by the supply side of the property market over the month of July. The key measures of the market analysed in the report are the number of new listings, the asking price expectation for those new listings and the level of inventory of unsold houses on the market at this time. The report is compiled from data captured by the website and represents close to 95% of all property movements in the NZ market as managed by licensed real estate agents.

The July 2010 report shows the first signs of some balancing within the market with new listings declining and a matching fall in asking price expectation. Both of these signals match to the reality that the property market is moving at a very slow pace in regard to sales and therefore for those needing to sell, pricing appropriately and marketing smartly are the only approach that can generate interest from what is clearly a reduced pool of buyers.

A full print version of the NZ Property Report – July 2010 is published below and is available for download (1.2MB) and distribution.

Summary of the market – July 2010

With the property market now firmly in the middle of winter the level of new listings coming onto the market has eased to a level expected of this quieter period of the year. For almost 9 months the flow of new listings has been at a level ahead of a year prior, but in July that trend was reversed. The net result of this steady flow of new listings for over 9 months is seen very clearly in the inventory levels. Measured on an equivalent number of weeks of sales the inventory of unsold houses across the country remains at high levels as compared to long term averages.

This strength of listings matched to the existing stock of unsold houses is challenging for property owners looking for buyers in what is a very slow paced market. In terms of sales of properties as reported by the REINZ the first 6 months of 2010 have seen just 29,844 sales; compared to 34,169 in the same 6 months of 2009 – a 12.7% decline.

It would appear that set against this market with high inventory and strong new listings sellers are heading the advice of real estate agents to price property to attract interest in the market which is what is driving these more competitive prices, down from $410,058 in June to $400,481 in July.

As has been commented on before the market situation between provincial and metropolitan NZ continues. In terms of new listings the 3 key metro areas saw an 11.6% decline in new listing in July compared to 2.3% increase for the sum total of provincial regions.

Asking Price

Asking price expectations of new listings coming onto the market fell significantly in July. From a peak of asking prices in March of $422,648 the truncated mean asking price has fallen to just $400,481 in 4 months.

This price represents a seasonally adjusted fall of 1.1% from June; it is also at the same levels as the month of July in both 2009 and 2008 signaling the softness in the market.

New Listings

The volume of new listings coming onto the market fell slightly from the June level of 11,106 to 10,586 in July. This represented a 2.3% decline when measured on a seasonally adjusted basis.

Over the 12 months to July 2010 a total of 145,733 new listings came onto the market. This compared with 134,378 in the prior period – an increase of 8.5%, on the same comparison property sales have at least kept pace up 8.1%

Inventory

The level of unsold houses on the market at the end of July totaled 52,404 up slightly from June. This represented the equivalent of 46.8 weeks, as assessed on a seasonally adjusted basis.

The inventory levels had been beginning to fall over the preceding two months, but this month saw a slight correction.

Regional Summary – Asking Price Expectations

The regional view of asking price changed significantly in July from both May and June. Asking prices have continued to ease with the scale of falls in some regions becoming quite marked as seen by the deep red colour in 5 of the 19 regions; these indicate falls of over 5% as compared to an average of the preceding 3 months – all are in provincial north island regions. Wairarapa with an asking price of $250,135 is the lowest reported over the past 3 years.

Asking prices did however firm across 3 regions – Queenstown lakes, Nelson and Gisborne. These South island regions also were regions that showed a more balanced market in both listings and inventory.

All of the 3 main metro areas showed easing in asking price most noticeable in Wellington and Canterbury, the latter showing a 4.6% fall from the 3 month average.

Regional Summary – New Listings

Whilst July levels of new listings were down just 1.7% compared to the prior month there was a turning point in the market. July was the first month this year to witness a decline on a –year-on-year basis; the last such month was back in October 2009.

Across the regions based purely on levels of new listings there were 8 regions of the 19 that saw falls indicating a switch from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market. Matched to these regions there were just 6 regions showing growth in listings with the Coromandel, Nelson and the West Coast recording listings growth of over 20%.

The Northland region recorded its lowest level of monthly listings at 399 since the beginning of 2007, down 5.7% compared to June and 3.2% below July 2009.

Regional Summary – Inventory

The indicative trend highlighted last month where there were a number of regions which were beginning to find a balance with less influence of buyers has taken a step backwards with the vast majority of regions back into a stronger position for buyers. Even the Nelson region which in June showed a modest sellers market has fallen back somewhat to a more balanced market.

In July of the 19 regions, all but 5 are showing a significant buyer’s market based on the current inventory as measured against long term averages.

The 3 regions of the country which are fairly well balanced with neither a buyers nor sellers market are regions with a heavy influence of lifestyle and potentially overseas interest – Queenstown, Nelson and the Coromandel.

Lifestyle Property

The flow of new listings for lifestyle properties continued to fall in July with just 833 new listings across the country, placing July amongst the lowest months going back to 2007. On a year-on-year comparison July was down 13.9%.

The asking price expectation also fell from $573,893 in June to $536,155 in July – a 2.3% fall as compared to the prior 3 months, but identical to July 2009. Significant price falls were seen in Gisborne, Canterbury, Marlborough, the Manawatu / Wanganui as well as the Wairarapa.

Apartments

The apartment market as judged by new listings seems flat with the past 3 months witnessing almost identical levels of new listings – 559 new ones in July. This represents a 23.7% decline from July 2009. Within the Auckland region where the majority of apartments are, new listings in July totaled 349, identical to June but down 35.5% as compared to a year earlier.

The asking price expectation of new apartment listings fell 7.7% in July as compares to the recent 3 month average at $357,616; this represented a 2.1% decline as compared to July 2009. For Auckland the asking price was $323,327 – down 8.3% compared to the recent 3 month average and down 5.5% as compared to July 2009.

Property Price Index

Comparing the sale price of properties across the country to the asking price expectation is not a perfect comparison, however the trends tend to align. The benefit is that the data for asking price is of the market today, whilst the selling price is reflective of the market active between 4 and 6 weeks ago. The latest comparison is highlighted below:

Realestate.co.nz data is compiled from asking prices of new residential listings as they come onto the market via subscribers to the realestate.co.nz website. The Realestate.co.nz website currently has over 94% of all licensed real estate offices subscribing and providing all of their listings onto the website. The asking price is presented as a truncated mean price at a 10% interval.

REINZ: data is compiled from reported unconditional residential sales from all members of the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand representing all licensed real estate offices. The sale price is published as a stratified median house price and is developed in association with the Reserve Bank of NZ.

Notes:

Truncated mean

The monthly asking price for new listings presented in this report utilises the measure of ‘truncated mean’. This measure is judged to be a more accurate measure of the market price than average price as it statistically removes the extremes that exist within any property market that can so easily introduce a skew to traditional average price figures.

The truncated mean used in this report removes the upper 10% and the lower 10% of listings in each data set. An average or mean of the balance of listings is then calculated.

Methodology

With the largest database of properties for sale in NZ, realestate.co.nz is uniquely placed to immediately identify any changes in the marketplace. The realestate.co.nz NZ Property Report is compiled from new listings coming onto the market from the more than 1,160 licensed real estate offices across NZ, representing more than 94% of all offices.

With an average monthly level of over 10,000 new listings, the realestate.co.nz NZ Property Report provides the largest monthly sample report on the residential property market, as well as a more timely view of the property market than any other property report. The data is collated and analysed at the close of each month, and the Report is compiled for the 1st day of the following month. This provides a feedback mechanism as to the immediate state of the market, well in advance of sales statistics which by the very nature of the selling process can reflect activity with a lag of between 2 and 4 months.

In analysing the details of the 11,106 new listings in the month of July, a total of 165 listings have been excluded due to anomalies. The categorisation of Lifestyle property is defined by the land area of the property. The criterion is a property having in excess of 0.3 hectares and being situated outside metropolitan areas.

Background to Realestate.co.nz

Realestate.co.nz is the official website company of the real estate industry of New Zealand, it is an industry owned web business providing online marketing services to the real estate industry. The shareholders in the business comprise the REINZ (50%) and six of the largest real estate companies (50%).

The business operates a portfolio of websites all focused to specialist sectors of the real estate market:

Realestate.co.nz is the heart of the business and is focused to the residential property market. It features the most comprehensive selection of property for sale and rent across NZ. The website attracts a significant monthly audience of over 350,000 unique browsers, with over 110,000 of those visiting from countries outside of NZ.

nzFarms is a specialist website presenting the most comprehensive selection of farms and agricultural businesses on the market across NZ. At this time it features over 5,000 listings for all types of farms and agricultural land as well as over 11,o00 lifestyle properties.

Prime Commercial is a specialist website presenting the most comprehensive selection of commercial property for purchase or lease on the market across NZ. At this time it features over 26,000 listings for all types of properties – retail, commercial, industrial and investment properties.

Prime Business is a specialist website presenting the most comprehensive selection of businesses for sale on the market across NZ. At this time it features over 4,000 listings for all types of businesses – retail, tourism, wholesale as well as franchise opportunities.

Zoodle is a specialist property information website providing very detailed data on all residential properties in NZ. The database comprises over 1.5m properties with detailed specifications, map and local amenities. The site provides online reports for free and for purchase covering valuation and legal information to greatly assist the needs of property buyers and sellers.

The web business of Realestate.co.nz site is the most comprehensive real estate web operation in NZ, currently hosting over 120,000 listings, covering this portfolio of residential property for sale and rent, commercial property for sale and lease, rural properties and farms, as well as businesses for sale. With a subscriber base of over 1,160 offices, the company represents over 94% of all listings from licensed real estate agents in NZ.

The full NZ Property Report for June 2010 can be downloaded here (1.4MB pdf document). Additionally the raw data is accessible here as an Excel spreadsheet enabling anyone to analyse the raw data and establish any trends or observations.

Usage rights are governed under attribution to the source of the data being Realestate.co.nz. The next NZ Property Report for August 2010 will be published on this website on Wednesday 1st September 2010 at 10am.

The touch screen – transforming our consumption of media

Posted on: July 26th, 2010 | Filed in Featured, Technology

I sense that we are reaching a tipping point (to quote the title of the excellent Malcolm Gladwell book) when it comes to our engagement with consumption of media.

I have just spent a week in the US at admittedly a technology conference for real estate, but my overwhelming sense is that we will witness within a year (maybe two at the outside) the transformation of our media consumption

We are at the dawn of the transformation where our simple finger(s) will drive our actions.

It started barely 3 years ago with the launch of the iPhone and as ever the adoption curve has become exponential. The iPhone was followed within a year with a couple of other smart phones all using our simple index finger to drive a complex computing platform in the palm of our hand. That couple of mobile devices (calling them phones is misleading) has grown into a flood as the Google Android platform has provided the open-source option to Apple’s proprietary system.

Adding to the smart phone platform has come the iPad, with a a staggering 3 million iPads sold in the first 100 days – far exceeding the initial sales of iPhones 3 years ago – this for a product costing over US$500 of which the majority of the first quarter of a million buyers had not even seen let alone touched the device before they typed in their online credit card order. A staggering US$1.5 billion in pre-order sales has to be a record for a brand new piece of complex technology.

This pervading wave of new hand-held mobile computing devices radically changes our engagement from the humble keyboard to the screen. For anyone who owns or has used a smart phone or an iPad (of which there are reported to be several thousand in NZ already, yet it is not officially on sale) the user experience is both intuitive and instantly engaging. You are drawn to “click” (touch) and swipe; you pinch to zoom and rotate to change perspective – the keyboard suddenly seems part of the typewriter generation.

The comment was made to great amusement at the conference that the 3 year old son of one of the presenters went up to the TV the other day and tried to swipe the screen to change channel!

Having said that I am still typing this using a traditional keyboard, and that is where the demarcation exists. The touch screen mobile devices are consumption devices, whereas for content creation the traditional PC with a keyboard still retains a functional efficiency. There is a blurring of the edges admittedly when you attach a blue tooth keyboard to an iPad, but that reinforces the point that our adopted manual dexterity for the keyboard is hard to supplant with a touch screen – some how the physical keys depressed to reinforce typing is too ingrained in our psyche, or at least it is for our current generation.

As a point of clarification the expression “media consumption device” does not imply a restriction to just reading magazines, viewing music and movies or playing games – just take a look across the endless aisles of apps for the iPhone or iPad, now totaling close to 200,000 and you can see almost every conceivable concept presenting every conceivable form of data.

So where does all of this take the real estate industry and the property searching process. As I stated in the summary from the Connect conference, “Location is context” and mobile computing devices are location aware devices so this tipping point will be critical for real estate. Being mobile to be able to view property information will benefit both buyers, sellers and agents. The insatiable demands of buyers and sellers to be better informed in the data that lives behind property transactions will be forthcoming at the point of decision making – inside a property, for as much as rich media can provide great insight to a property nobody is going to make that buying decision without doing the walk-through, well almost nobody!

Full Disclosure

I have both an iPhone and iPad – my experience with the iPhone was instantaneous (although I was a late adopter), it is both intuitively simple and yet so staggeringly valuable and versatile. As for the iPad, I have had it for 2 months and I had an initial passion as part of the novelty; this waned slightly, however once I adjusted to its use as a complement to a laptop and the addition of some awesome apps I am now beginning to get hooked – seriously hooked! The recent launch last week in NZ will certainly only enhance the experience as I suspect we will see a flow of excellent local apps onto the “shelves” of the app store.

NZ Property Market Pulse – July 2010

Posted on: July 22nd, 2010 | Filed in Featured, Property Pulse - Regional Market Report

The Property Market Pulse report provides a set of factsheets for each of the 19 regions of the country consolidating the latest data from key sources in the real restate market. From the Real Estate Institute (REINZ) comes the latest sales numbers for June as well as the median sales price for key regions and the stratified sales price for key centers. From the Realestate.co.nz comprehensive database of listings comes the key measure of inventory of unsold properties on the market.

Property Sales

The number of property sales is a key measure of buyer activity. The Real Estate Institute release this data on a monthly basis from the sales made by all licensed agents in the prior month making this data the most timely and comprehensive. Actual monthly sales data is effected by seasonal factors, for this reason seasonally adjusted data is presented which clearly shows one month to the next if the sales are going up or down.

Commentary:

Sales in June fell by 3.6% from May on a seasonally adjusted basis. A total of 4,575 property sales were recorded by licensed real estate agents in the month of June. Back in June 2009 the total sales was 6,040. In the first 6 months of 2010 a total of 29,844 properties were sold across the country this is down 12.7% as compared to the first half of 2009 when 34,169 properties were sold.

Property Price

The selling price of properties measures that critical balance between what a buyer is prepared to pay and what a seller is prepared to accept. The Real Estate Institute data of prior month sales produces a median price. This raw number is then re-calculated through a model developed in partnership with the Reserve Bank of NZ to create a Stratified Price, which ensures that volume changes in key price segments do not skew the figures.

Commentary:

The stratified price rose slightly in June to $363,925 from $361,600 in June. The June price is up 4.2% as compared to June 2009. As highlighted in the chart above the sale price across the country has remained fairly stable over the past 9 month with some small ups and downs. The current price is still 4.5% below the peak price in the market back in November 2007.

Stock of Property

The number of properties on the month is provided from Realestate.co.nz data and measures the level of seller activity in the market. The data represents the total number of new listings coming onto the market each month and is compiled at the start of each month for the prior month and is published in the NZ Property Report. The measure of properties on the market is represented by the number of weeks of equivalent sales, and judged on a comparative basis with prior months more accurately reflects the state of the market.

Commentary:

The level of inventory of properties on the market measured in equivalent weeks of sale fell again in June. It now stands at 45 weeks as compared to 47 weeks in May and 35 weeks in June last year. The long term average is around 38 weeks which would indicate that the market is still very much in favour of buyers rather than sellers.

These statistics are the aggregation of all the statistics from across the country. As is well know by those in the industry, real estate is a local business and in an attempt to provide greater insight into the local market the same set of key data – sales, selling price and inventory has been calculated for each of the 19 regions of the country. Check out the factsheet for your local region to see what is happening in your neck of the woods.

North Island

South Island

Connect – the global conference where technology and real estate “connect”

Posted on: July 17th, 2010 | Filed in Featured, International, Real Estate Industry, Technology, Website searching

What began as a small gathering of technologists and tech minded real estate people over a decade and a half ago has evolved into the most significant global conference on real estate – not just real estate technology. I make this statement as the reality is that technology is, has been, and will in the future, continue to be the largest change agent of this industry globally.

Connect is hosted by Inman News – the specialist news service for the real estate industry and its charismatic founder and host of the conference Brad Inman.

This year’s San Francisco event (they are hosted twice a year – New York in January) has just wrapped up and for me as a regular attendee the value of the event never fails to deliver.

A key essence of the event is information overload. The feeling that after 3 days you have been exposed to the largest mass of insight and emerging comprehension of where this industry is heading in the future. There are always (I sense deliberately) more sessions and content than one person alone can consume. That means that after these 3 days I have to sit down and re-read the scribbled notes and digest the learning in order to come up with a picture that has emerged from the conference.

There isn’t a single message promoted as the theme of the conference, but there is always, in summing up the conference an emerging train of thought that can best describe the conference. For me this year that came from one of the final speakers on the last day – Matt Gilligan of SimpleGeo, who made the simple statement that “Location is Context”. A simple statement, but in my mind loaded with powerful inference. For over the past 2 years the emerging role of mobile technologies has grown and grown to the situation where at this conference more than any other preceding Connect conference mobile was all anyone talked about. Mobile is all about location and being location aware is in a broader context a radical paradigm shift for almost all businesses, however for real estate location is at its very core. The phrase “Location, Location, Location” is an international phrase as well known as the McDonalds “I’m Loving it” or Nike’s “Just do it”

A show of hands ably demonstrated the view of the attendees (some 2,000 of them) as to ownership of smart phones (>70%) and iPads (c.15% after just 3 months on sale!). This industry, or at least those at the forefront of technology adoption within it, are embracing mobile as a game changer for the industry. The exhibiting companies as well as almost all presenters talked and demonstrated smart phone apps and iPad apps – next year this portfolio will undoubtedly extend to include Andriod and potentially Microsoft Mobile Window 7.

Another interesting stream of content from the conference of specific relevance to Realestate.co.nz was the whole area of search. A couple of excellent panel discussions and workshop looked at search as the online tool of entry to the real estate marketplace. Providing an unbiased and external perspective was Gary Flake of Microsoft who rightly asked the question; could there be a better way of searching for property? after all the facet based search on price, bedrooms, bathrooms and property type is really a crude way of interpreting the characteristics of lifestyle / lifestage. This theme was picked up by a workshop group who having the benefit of a 24 period to debate and discuss the issue came back with some excellent proposals around leveraging the “Social Graph” to apply all that accessible online information tied up collectively in all your personal behaviours, actions and intent online to better present property that really should suit you.

The practical application being that if you were able to share your key social graph around these parameters – salary = price range; family scale = size of house; age = size of house / location; entertainment likes & activity = location / style of house. All of these clues are bound up in your profile & activity on sites such as Facebook / LinkedIn / Amazon / iTunes / Netflix / your bank account. Now clearly this list includes some very non-public data and as such raises some red flags, but just challenge the concept for a moment to say, if this social graph was inputted through an algorithm to the database of available property on the market as well as alerts to new property, it would certainly provide a richer set of results than just searching for 3 bedroom homes under $500,000 in inner city suburbs of Wellington.

The Connect conference is in many ways a reaffirmation of the fact that we live in a wired (& more so these days wireless) and mutli-connected world and the issues and challenges faced in the real estate market in NZ are so similar to the issues in Europe, US, Australia and Asia, further evidenced by attendees from all the major developed countries of the world represented at the conference. This was further evidenced when set against the hi tech apps and online tools profiled at the conference, a presenter talked of the abandonment rate of telephone inquiries which divert to voice mail and from research how low the return call rate was. It left a sobering reinforcement of the fact that technology cannot replace the human process, but hopefully can make the smarter agents more effective and efficient and enable them to track that performance more accurately as an individual or business owner.

Connect is a valuable event. It has grown from being a US domestic event to become an international event – even noted by many at this years conference that Australians seems to be “everywhere”. I personally was delighted to see a good number of NZ representatives eagerly absorbing the content. It is a conference I would highly recommend to anyone with a conviction to invest in their career in real estate and who recognises the game-changing role of technology in that future.

Great news could be on the horizon, there was a question asked in the closing session as to other locations for hosting Connect. The question was posed by an American, their question was directed at an alternative US location, but the answer from Brad included the inference that they might look at international locations – Beijing and Sydney were mentioned.

To have a Connect in our Asia Pacific region would be enormous and I will share my passion and support to try and get such a conference organized.

The Unconditional Blog

The impartial voice of the industry

Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category

Property buyers continue to favour the web over print when searching

Sellers turn to trusted agents to facilitate sale – results of a new survey

Property investment loses its appeal – results of a new survey

Vineyards for sale – a perspective of the market of the past few years

Facts on the volume of property sales

“The number of house sales in recent months has dropped around one third from the same time last year, and is also around one third below the long term average. We are now approaching similar levels of sales as during 2008 at the height of the recession”

How best to promote your property to attract buyers?

NZ Property Report – July 2010

Summary of the market – July 2010

Asking Price

New Listings

Inventory

Regional Summary – Asking Price Expectations

Regional Summary – New Listings

Regional Summary – Inventory

Lifestyle Property

Apartments

Property Price Index

Notes:

The touch screen – transforming our consumption of media

NZ Property Market Pulse – July 2010

Property Sales

Property Price

Stock of Property

Connect – the global conference where technology and real estate “connect”

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