This engagement with local communities extends beyond the employment; for almost all real estate companies in one way or another are huge supporters of voluntary community organisations and charities.

This was brought home to my last night when I was invited to attend the Professionals Group Company dinner. The event which brought together the business owners from across the 78 offices provided an opportunity for their chosen charity – The Child Cancer Foundation to provide an update on the great work that organisation undertakes to provide the families and patients coping with childhood cancer to live as normal a life as possible. They believes that no child or their family walking the childhood cancer journey should ever feel alone.

I, like all of the attendees of the dinner could not help, but be moved by the amazing work this charity does, but also the courage of the wonderful children who are battling something that should not be a part of a young persons life. To have a charity such as the Child Cancer Foundation is truly wonderful and to have an organisation like the Professionals Group commit such resources and dedication to running fund raising events as well as pledging a component of each transaction to the funding of this charity is indeed humbling. I can say with all honesty I was moved today to make a donation to show my appreciation and support.

I would also like to acknowledge the charitable support that other real estate companies within the industry provide – not by any means a comprehensive list and I apologise if I omit some, but hopefully it demonstrates the commitment of this industry that pours millions of dollars each year into charitable and community organisations.

Bayleys sponsor Guide dogs for the blind

Barfoot &Thompson are a supporter of the Starship Foundation

Ray White support the Ronald McDonald House

Harcourts have a Foundation that supports community organisations

Harveys has a charitable trust – the Stepping Stone Foundation

LJ Hooker has a Foundation that supports both charitable and community projects

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.

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

• Northland
• Auckland
• Coromandel
• Waikato
• Central North Island
• Bay of Plenty
• Gisborne
• Hawkes Bay
• Taranaki
• Manawatu / Wanganui
• Wairarapa
• Wellington

South Island

• Nelson
• Marlborough
• Canterbury
• West Coast
• Otago
• Queenstown Lakes
• Southland

Property sales in the Coromandel remained steady between May and June with just a 2% seasonally adjusted increase. There were 46 sales in June as compared to 42 in June 2009. In the first 6 months of 2010 a total of 300 properties were sold compared to 277 in the same period of 2009 an increase of 8.3%.

Inventory of houses on the market fell in June to 171 weeks of equivalent sales. This level of inventory is consistent with the long term average of 172 weeks. This would indicate that the market is fairly well balanced between buyers and sellers.

Property prices for the Coromandel are included in the broad Auckland regional median property price, in June this price was $445,000 down from the May figure of $455,000 and the third consecutive month of falling price. As compared to a year ago prices are up 2.3%.

Property prices fell significantly in June from $325,000 in May to $280,000. As compared to June 2009 property prices are down 9.7%.

Sales also fell in June on a seasonally adjusted basis by 19.1%. A total of just 99 property sales were recorded in June as compared to 167 in June 2009. In the first 6 months of 2010 total sales were 754 as compared to 875 in the same period in 2009 a fall of 13.8%.

Inventory of houses on the market fell again in June to 145 weeks of equivalent sales, this continues to be well ahead of the long term average in the region of 110 weeks.

In overall terms the property market in the Northland region continues to reflect a buyer’s market.

Property prices based on the stratified pricing model slipped in June down by $10,000 to $471,090. Compared to June 2009 the stratified price is up 3.2%

Property sales also slipped in June down 6.7% on a seasonally adjusted basis. There were 1,599 sales in June compared to 1,990 in June 2009. In the first 6 months of 2010 total sales are down 8% from 10,879 in 2009 to 10,005 this year.

Inventory of houses on the market fell again in June. The June figure of 35 weeks of equivalent sales is now only slightly ahead of the long term average in the region of 32 weeks.

In overall terms the property market across Auckland continues to be steady, certainly a more robust level of activity compared to other regions of the country, although prices are weak.

Property sales in the Waikato fell further in June with a seasonally adjusted fall of 11% from May. A total of 240 property sales were recorded in June as compared to 373 in June 2009. In the first half of 2010 a total of 1,691 property sales were recorded, down 16.5% from the 2,026 in the first half of 2009.

Inventory of houses on the market increased in June as a result of the slower sales. The inventory stands at 56 weeks of equivalent sales. This level remains well above the long term average of 45 weeks. This would indicate that the market still holds an advantage for buyers.

Property prices for the Waikato are included in the broad Waikato / Bay of Plenty regional median property price, in May this price was $322,000 which was up 1.0% on June 2009 price.

Property sales in the Bay of Plenty fell on a seasonally adjusted basis in June by 9.4%. A total of 266 property sales were recorded in June. In the first half of 2010 a total of 1,812 property sales were recorded compared to 2,131 sales in the first half of 2009, a fall of 15%.

Inventory of houses on the market fell again in June following the fall from the peak of 75 weeks of equivalent sales in April. The June inventory of 65 weeks of equivalent sales remains high relative to the long term average of 55 weeks. This would indicate that the market still holds a slight advantage for buyers.

Property prices for the Bay of Plenty are included in the broad Waikato / Bay of Plenty regional median property price, in May this price was $322,000 which was up 1.0% on June 2009 price.

Property sales in Gisborne showed a 32% seasonally adjusted increase in June with a total of 36 sales in the month. This compares with 50 sales in June 2009. In the first 6 months of 2010 a total of 219 property sales have been reported compared to 277 in the same period in 2009 a fall of 21%.

Inventory of houses on the market rose in June to 52 weeks of equivalent sales, up from 47 in May. The June level is still well above the long term average of 43 weeks. This would indicate that the market is still favouring buyers.

Property prices for the Gisborne are included in the broad Waikato / Bay of Plenty regional median property price, in June this price was $322,000 which was up 1.0% on June 2009 price.

Property prices in the Hawkes Bay rose slightly in June at $285,000. As compared to a year ago prices in the region are up by 1.8%.

Property sales in the region remained stable in June with no change based on seasonally adjusted data. A total of 163 properties were sold in the region in June. In the first half of 2010 a total of 958 which is 19% down on the same period last year.

Inventory of houses on the market fell slightly in June with 48 weeks of equivalent sales on the market. This inventory level continues to be above the long term average of 35 weeks. This would indicate that the market still swings in favour of buyers.