NZ Property Report – October 2009

The month of October tends to be one of the largest months for new listings. In October 2007 16,751 new listings came onto the market and a year ago as the market was reeling under the economic gloom 14,462 new listings came onto the market. These comparable figures give a perspective to the October 09 of 13,550 – somewhat subdued seems to summarise this market, a sentiment that has been in place for quite a few months with shortages of listings in some regions.

The impact of subdued levels of new listings matched to recent sales which whilst significantly up on prior year still are well below long term averages means inventory levels are not building with the majority of regions edging into a sellers market.

For those sellers venturing to bring their properties onto the market the expectation of asking price has seen virtually no movement from last month which did experience a significant rise.

Asking Price

The vendor’s expectation of asking price for properties coming onto the market in October remained stable.

The truncated mean price for the 13,550 listings added in the month was $418,759. This represents a 3.5% rise in asking price when compared to the moving average of the past 3 months (Jul/Aug/Sep).

The asking price of new listings in October last year was $406,271 representing a 3.0% year on year increase.

New Listings

The number of new listings coming onto the market rose to 13,550, from the September total of 12,674.

Despite the uplift in listings during October the level of new listings over the past 12 months continues to show a 21% fall with 133,956 new listings in the recent 12 months as compared to 170,428 in the prior 12 months spanning 2007/8.

Inventory

The overall level of available inventory as measured by equivalent weeks of sales grew slightly again in October – the 4th consecutive month of rise from 25.4 weeks in July to the current level of 26.2 weeks.

The year on year inventory decline though better reflects the change in the market over the past 12 months. A year ago the equivalent inventory still exceeded 46 weeks – equating to over 10 months of inventory.

Regional Summary – Asking price expectation

With a national asking price rise of 3.5% as compared to the prior 3 month average, the regional variances are quite significant. Of the 19 regions 7 showed a price decline, the largest of which was Gisborne, the remainder were significantly smaller falls.

The dominant rise and the leverage factor for the rise nationally is the 5.3% increase in Auckland. This rise comes on the back of a 5.9% increase in September. Auckland now with a truncated mean asking price of $535,313 is only slightly behind the peak of asking price of $547,163 set back in October 2007.

The two other major centers of Wellington and Canterbury both showed increases of around 4%.

Regional Summary – listings

The overall perspective of the regions continues to point to a sellers market with only 2 regions showing a significant rise in listings – these being Coromandel and Northland. The Northland and Coromandel region’s increases are more than likely a function of traditional seasonal listings of holiday home properties.

Regions on the increase are also Otago and Taranaki with both seeing over 10% increase as compared to October last year. In the case of Otago the number of listings (581) grew 30% over the prior month.

There were 5 regions (Central North Island, Manawatu, Wairarapa, Marlborough and Southland) that saw new listing at levels significantly down on last year.

Regional Summary – inventory

The balance of the market between sellers and buyers is represented in the attached chart with the trend to blue highlighting a relative shortage of listings with the trend to green favouring buyers with a surplus of listings. The assessment is made in judging the current month with the 2 year average inventory level.

The main 3 centers of Auckland, Wellington and Canterbury (Christchurch) continue to experience inventory levels relatively low to long term average, to these can be added the regions of Central North Island and the Hawkes Bay.

At the other end of the market the regions seeing more of a buyers market are Northland, Southland, the West Coast, Wairarapa and Gisborne.

Lifestyle Property

The level of new listings of lifestyle properties remained close to the number for September, somewhat less than would have been expected for the time of year. A total of 1,160 new listings came onto the market in October.

Key regions showing increases were Auckland – 297, up 27% on prior year; Bay of Plenty – 120, up 67% on prior year; Hawkes Bay – 49, up 63% on prior year and the Coromandel – 22, up 22% on prior year.

The truncated mean price for the new listings was $603,271 representing a 7% increase on the 3 month average.

Apartments

A total of 651 new apartment listings came onto the market in October representing a 10% increase over the prior year. Again Auckland represents two thirds of all these listings with 425 new listings, this represented a 23% increase in the Auckland market as compared to the prior year.

The truncated mean asking price for the new apartment listings in the month was $376,487 representing a return to the levels of the earlier months of the year after a rise last month. As compared to the 3 month average the October price represented a 2% fall.

The full report can be downloaded here (1.1MB 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 November 2009 will be published on this blog on Tuesday 1st December at 10am.