The detailed article in the Herald on Sunday by Andrea Milner did what all good reporting should do – provide the human touch. That in many ways differentiates the blogger from the journalist.
Whilst I have at my finger tips the data that provides insights and trends to provide models of where real estate markets are headed (or to to be more accurate – where they have come from!), a good journalist has the expertise and experience to bond together the facts with the emotion to provide a compelling sense of empathetic attachment.
That is where the traditional world of journalists and the new world of social media can coalesce and mutually benefit irrespective of the medium (print or online).
Anyway back to mortgagee statistics. The situation as the article represents is that the scale of searching for the keyword of mortgagee has tailed off during the year as the chart below represents. The red line tracks the number of searches on the word mortgagee each week since early 2008 (tracked on the left hand axis). The blue area represents the weekly level of listings on the site of mortgagee properties (tracked on the right hand axis).
The extreme peaks of searching which at one point totaled 3,500 per week; amounting to close to a third of all keyword searches has now receded to a level of around 1 search in every 14 is for mortgagee properties.
As for inventory of mortgagee properties. The level has remained fairly stable through this year with some recent fall as we head towards Christmas. The reality is that mortgage repossessions are still occurring – in fact almost as many are being listed as are being sold which is good for the market, as a healthy turnover indicates a steady sales market for property overall. The likelihood is that through 2010 these numbers will begin to fall; however the fact is that mortgagee properties are typically an indicator that lags the more positive trends of economic performance and consumer confidence.
It is worth just confirming that as mortgagee properties are not a defined category of listing submitted to realestate.co.nz the means that the only way in which people find such listings is by typing in the keyword or keywords into the search box.
The data of listings using this term is collated using the same method with the filter undertaken manually to remove any listings that have used the word mortgagee to deliberately capture interest for properties that are not being sold on behalf of the mortgagor. Examples being headlines such as “As cheap as a mortgagee property”.
