The latest statistics for mortgagee property featured on realestate.co.nz shows a rise over the past few weeks. After a fall off in the lead up to Christmas, the stock of such listings has grown from a low of 218 in the last week of December to 285 today.
The graph below tracks the weekly level of listings (blue area on the graph – left hand axis) against the number of keyword searches (red line – right hand axis). As a point of note the extreme spike in searches for mortgagee property in April of last year when the spike broke through the graph was a direct result of a feature on Campbell Live on TV3 which covered the extent of mortgagee property sales at the time referring to the site data.
Whilst the number of listings is increasing once again, the number of searches for the key words of “mortgagee”,, “mortgagee sale” and “mortgagee auction” have only marginally increased over the past month since their peak in the early spring when just under 2,000 searches were carried out on the site each week – the figure for last week was just under 800. It will be most interesting to track these searches in the coming weeks as the inventory rises.
A deeper analysis of the make up of these listings shows exactly the type of property comprising mortgagee listings. In terms of price point the majority are in the sub $300,000 bracket with nearly half of all mortgagee listings in this bracket as compared to representing a third of all listings on the website. The mid price bracket of $300k to $600k is interestingly under represented in mortgagee listings with just 31% of the 285 listings as compared to 44% of all of the listings on the site.
Analysing the listings by region is equally illuminating with a clear domination of Auckland based listings – over 55% of all mortgagee listings are in Auckland, whereas they represent just 28% of the total of all listings on the website. Almost all other regions of the country are less represented in terms of mortgagee listings, with the slight exception of the Waikato with 7% of mortgagee listings as compared to the 6% of all listings the website features.
It is important to note that the base of 285 mortgagee listings featured on realestate.co.nz represents just 0.5% of all residential listings – equating to 1 house in every 200 that is currently on the market being subject to or advertised as a mortgagee sale. This very small base can cause some of the data for the regions above to be heavily skewed by small listing number changes.
“Not a mortgagee sale although seller is eager to move on – View quickly to secure one of the best buys in the area.”
“so you maybe the lucky person who secures this apartment at a price similar to buying at mortgagee auction”
“This is not a mortgagee sale or a desperate sale, but a very keen seller = bargain for you, very negotiatiable”
“This is not a mortgagee sale or a desperate sale, but a very keen seller here = bargain for you” (not a duplicate listing – same agent)
“BETTER BUYING THAN A MORTGAGEE SALE!”
“Cheap Like a Mortgagee Sale!!”
“You Want Mortgagee Pricing??”
“- Urgent – Mortgagee – Otahuhu – South – Auckland – Rental – Income – Flats – Auction – Potential – Bargain – Do-up”
“apartments were purchased by the current owners at a Mortgagee Sale. They now want to sell ”
“Great buying – not a mortgagee sale but could be!”
“This is not a mortgagee sale or a desperate sale, but a very keen seller = bargain for you, very negotiatiable” (another none duplicate)
“Seriously For Sale – Avoid Mortgagee Sale!”
“This is not a mortgagee sale or a desperate sale, but a very keen seller = bargain for you, very negotiatiable” (and again…same agent)
Above all examples from the link you provided above…perhaps it’s this practice that is on the increase, not actual mortgagee sales…
It is great to have such community content from this blog! – appreciate this investigation which shows how the real estate agents are recognising the power of the web as a marketing tool!
To use the term Mortgagee Sale or Mortgagee Auction can be restricted by the bank or finance company who is initiating the sales process. For example, I have listed a mortgagee auction yesterday, but the Finance Company has a policy of not advertising or making any reference to “mortgagee sale.” I must submit all draft ads for their approval before commencing marketing – why? That is their policy that must be adhered to.
However, the goal remains the same for any sale, to achieve the highest possible price in any given market.
The point I am making about the word mortgagee, there may be much more property out there that is not being identified by using the key word search. For an urgent sale and generally a bargain situation my advice to buyers is not to limit any search criteria. Keep your eyes and ears open and read between the lines.
Mark
This is valuable and insightful information, of which I was unaware. My assumption was that as part of the legal and fiduciary responsibility of an agent you had a requirement to disclose all relevant information regarding a property that you were aware of at the time of listing.
I have always conceded and made people aware that this tracking of mortgagee listings is only reflection of the use of the word in the text of a listing and as highlighted above can be open to “abuse”.
Certainly when it comes to disclosure when dealing with a buyer directly that they are made aware it is a mortgagee sale. The auction document makes this clear. A buyer must be aware that for example chattels are not included in this type of transaction and there is no guarantee there will be vacant possession either.
The policy from the banks / finance company (not all companies by the way) is that they are shielding the owner from public embarrassment.
I find this very interesting and enlightening.
As a passionate believer in richer, more comprehensive information being accessible in real estate transactions. This statement speaks to the fact that as prospective buyers will need to be made aware of the circumstances at a stage – then that stage is the earlier the better to allow them to make informed decisions.
I can equally appreciate the sensitivity and public profile perspective of the vendors, but we now live in a more open and transparent world – one where the word “redundancy” is no longer taboo, and even to an extent “bankruptcy” – this being the case an open disclosure of a mortgagee sale would be in the best interests of all parties from the start. Buyers always want to know vendor motivation as a key indicator of the “supply” side of the buying decision.
It would be interesting to see others opinions on this matter.
Vendors don’t need to supply us or our clients with information as to why they are selling if it has no direct bearing on the property itself. And why should they? All too often we as sales consultants are guilty of giving away too much information of a personal nature about our vendors. If our vendors were listening we would probably not tell our buyers about the marriage break up, job loss, death or jail sentence leading to the sale of the property!
[...] (which was the source content I directed the journalist to review) contained some valuable comments – one particularly from someone who has taken the time to review some of these [...]
I search for mortgagee sales in google, there are sites in the market place (such as http://www.mortgagee.co.nz) where the agents creative use/possible abuse (as you pointed out Alistair) cannot be a factor as they deal only with mortgagee sales. Therefore all listings on the site are mortgagee sales listed by REINZ agents.
Anna
Thanks for highlighting this site. Yes it is as it says has just mortgagee listings, that is all it does. However as with all online businesses there is a very well established rule which has never been broken in all of the internet’s short life
“you can’t build traffic without content – and you can’t build content without traffic”
mortgagee.co.nz has 19 listings – all of which are definitely mortgagee listings, however without an audience there is no appeal to attract new listings upon which they can build a business by charging for listings, equally only 19 listings makes the site of little value for searchers of mortgagee properties.
At realestate.co.nz we have over 114,000 listings of which 284 are true mortgagee listings – the overall site last month was viewed by over 380,000 unique visitors.
Hi Alistair,
Sorry if I hit a nerve there. I assumed you would delete the reference to the site example, everything in brackets was for your info.
I am merely trying to point out that the corrupt search results may be swaying people to the search engines and may be a reason for the subdued searching on this site. If I am looking for a mortgagee sale or perceived bargain, the other 113,700 listings are surplus to my needs and become fog to sift through, corrupt results from abuse of the search terms in listings doesn’t help me navigate through that fog. It would be interesting to find historical volumes on the search engines to see if there is a correlation in decrease here vs increase there.
Anna
No problem – no raw nerve (well a small one around agents happily believing that any website is a good website and paying to build the value of other websites that can deliver little traffic).
To your point though – you are absolutely right it is not the absolute quantity that is important it is the accuracy of the data. I value you input and will reflect on this to make sure we do not have you lost in the fog!
[...] rise” (which was the source content I directed the journalist to review) contained some valuable comments – one particularly from someone who has taken the time to review some of these “mortgagee” [...]