NZ Property Report – April 2010

The level of new listings coming onto the market fell in the month of April on an actual basis by 15%, and on a seasonally adjusted basis by 6%. This has led to the arresting of the steady increase seen in inventory levels of unsold houses over the past 10 months. Clearly as a function of the level of new listings sellers seem confident to put their properties on the market.

These statistics are detailed in the latest NZ Property Report for April 2010, published here and available as a downloadable report.

The overall level of inventory of unsold homes remains high indicating that for the majority of the country a buyer’s market prevails, albeit with a trend beginning towards a balanced market.

The asking price expectation in April clearly signals that sellers keen to list their property show no signs of feeling that prices are moving significantly up or down; as for 3 months now this expectation has been fixed at around $420,000. The movement in the last few months has slowed to less than 1% bringing the year on year change to just 4%. This year on year change is less than the current annual price appreciation of 7% reported in the REINZ Stratified price for March.

Regionally the market in the main metropolitan centres continues at a faster pace than provincial NZ where there has been a noticeable slowing of new listings coming onto market which however has failed to impact inventory as sales in these areas are equally running at low levels.

Asking Price

Property price expectations of new listings coming onto the market barely moved in the past month. The truncated mean of the 12,225 listings added in the month was $422,520, this was unchanged against the most recent 3 month average and up just 4% as compared to April 2009. Overall asking prices have been creeping up for over 15  months from lows of $390,000.

New Listings

The volume of new listings coming onto the market fell in April in what is traditionally a quieter month. The 12,225 listings though still represent a 17% increase as compared to a year ago. At that time a year ago the property market was finding an active level of bargain hunters matched to a nervous range of sellers which resulted in a rapid decline in new listings and subsequent inventory.

Inventory

The level of unsold houses on the market at the end of April totaled 53,123.This represented the equivalent of 46.5 weeks.

The inventory of unsold homes had been rising steadily over the past 10 months, however for the first time the trend has been reversed. A component of this is the seasonal trend which sees greater levels of new listings in summer vs. autumn.

At this time last year the inventory levels were at 42.5 weeks as at that time new listings were drying up as sellers were nervous of the threat of collapsing house prices.

Regional Summary – Asking Price Expectations

The change between March and April in terms of asking price expectation across the various regions is that whilst overall price movements nationally have hardly changed, there has been a variety of movements within the regions. Most of these movements are not significant in scale – most being less than 5% when viewed as current month compared to recent 3 month average.

Across the 19 regions, 5 showed increases of which the Coromandel was the largest with a 5.3% increase. 8 regions showed falls with the 7% decline in the Wairarapa the largest. The balance of 6 regions showed hardly any change in price.

Regional Summary – New Listings

Across the regions the trend of new listings coming onto the market indicates a view of a buyer’s market however there are changes from the month of March.

There were 3 regions in April which reported year on year listings decline for the month – Central North Island, Nelson and Manawatu / Wanganui; the latter 2 showing a significant decline of over 20%.

There still remain 8 of the 19 regions showing significant year on year growth in listings for the month including the main metropolitan centres. The largest increases were seen in Coromandel and Southland – both over 60%, with Wellington at 40% year on year increase. Auckland and Canterbury showed 22% and 26% increases respectively.

Regional Summary – Inventory

Inventory levels fell across all of the 19 regions with the sole exception of the West Coast which rose slightly to 162 weeks.

Whilst the inventory levels have fallen the vast majority of the regions are experiencing levels of inventory well above both long term average (2007-2009) as well as measured against the prior 12 month average.

The broad perspective is that for 15 of the regions across the country including all the main urban centres inventory levels place the market firmly in the camp of a buyer’s market with a good selection of properties available for interested buyers.

The region of the Coromandel is the only region that based on current inventory (154 weeks) is moving very slightly towards a sellers market. The comparable data is that for the Coromandel the average inventory over the past 3 years has been 173 weeks and over the past 12 months 188 weeks – the peak of inventory for the Coromandel was reached in December 2008 at 284 weeks.

Lifestyle Property

A total of 1,124 new listings of lifestyle properties came onto the market in April. This represented a 24% year on year increase. This level has remained strong over the past 3 months all of which have been well ahead of the same months a year ago.

At $567,101 the truncated mean asking price was down 2% on March and 3% down as compared to the recent 3 month average.

The largest rise in new listings was seen in the Bay of Plenty with 102 new listings, more than double the levels of April 2009

Apartments

The number of new apartments listed remained steady in April with 601 listed in the month. The overall level of new apartment listings is strong with a 48% year on year growth. In the first 4 months of this year 2,393 new apartment listings have come onto the market – a 35% increase over the same period last year

The truncated mean asking price of new apartment listings at $416,986 was up 5.9% on the latest 3 month average, up 12% on prior year.

The Wellington market continues to see strong growth in listings with a further 108 listed in April taking the 4 months total for 2010 to 471 a 126% increase compared to 2009.

The full report can be downloaded here (1.2MB 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 by attribution to the source of the data being Realestate.co.nz. The next NZ Property Report for May 2010 will be published on this website on Tuesday 1st June at 10am.