Nelson February 2009 Sales – UPDATED
It would appear that Nelson was a busy little market into the back end of the month. As you may be aware the Real Estate Institute report their sales figures around about 12-16th of the preceding month. Data from some agencies therefore is not always available on the 2nd or 3rd day of the month, and may not arrive at the Institute for a few days after that. End of month is a very busy time in most Real Estate agencies administrations departments.
To that end here is a revised chart for February 2009. It illustrates that the trend I was speaking about at the beginning of the month appears to have continued right through to the 28th.
However in using that early preliminary data, I said volume numbers were down. Actually the volume numbers are up and I’ll leave that to the institute to officially report, but I can say they are the highest for a while. Good to see that 4 sections sold too.
It will be interesting to see what percentage of National Sales Nelson will be too.
March 07 2009 12:17 pm | Nelson and The Market
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andy hamilton on 07 Mar 2009 at 4:05 pm #
Never mind the volume David its the median sale price which the punters will fixate on and from what I am hearing, for the second time in 3 months it will again come in below $300,000. Care to confirm? If so you would have to go all the way back to the first few months of 2006 to find two months out of three with sub-$300,000 medians by the REINZ measure. Jeez who would have thought Nelson prices would be back at early 2006 values (certainly not many agents, (your good self excluded I am sure) who used to maintain Nelson prices NEVER fell).Of course all of these sales took place before the awful unemployment announcements shook the region, so would it be fair to guess we have had a bit of a dead cat bounce in terms of volume?
David Leggott on 07 Mar 2009 at 5:39 pm #
Your median figure is pretty close on the money by my calcs. However in light of increased investor activity and the decreased options available for first home buyers re the mandatory deposits most financial institutions are insisting on, in comparison to a few short yrs back, it was on the cards. There is no doubt that the banks strict adherence to new minimum deposit requirements is making many buyers lower there exceptions.
And as investors have been sitting on the fence for so long now, their appearance in quantity at recent Open Homes, along with many successful offers was always going to have an effect.
Dec 08’s sales figure return from Nelson was unusual.
It included 10 x units at 623 Rocks Rd, all sold under $247k, and in fact 5 for under $200k. By my calcs that lowered the median near on $20k in that month. I’m not saying they didn’t happen because thats obviously not the case, but to use Dec’s figure as a barometer, you need to be aware and factor those unit sales in.
Looking at Feb the hot spot seems to be $300-$350k where the median price above CV was 15% over. Under $300k in was about 10% over CV. $350k up to $400k, it was also about 10% above, however once you go above $500k the delta reduces dramatically.
andy hamilton on 08 Mar 2009 at 7:59 am #
Thanks for the info David.
andy hamilton on 08 Mar 2009 at 12:36 pm #
By the way I am assuming the 623 Rocks Rd sales you are referring to are the mortgagee sales of the Sands apartments? There were 20 or so of them up for mortgagee sale and my records show that in August of last year Harcourts were tring to sell Unit 213 (1 bed) for $460,000 and Bayleys were trying to sell unit 207 (2 bed) for $520,000. These were the prices that agents were thinking they could get BEFORE the mortgagee sale so its fascinating to see what dramatic discounts were achieved once the mortgagee sale took place – looks like minimum 50% discount on prior expectations.
Accordingly I dont think you can argue that this block of sales distorts December’s figures. The low prices achieved reflect a large mortgagee sale, and lets face it if those sales had taken place even 12 months ago the apartments would have sold for more like $400,000 judging by what agents thought they could get in August. The low prices reflect a collapse in the percieved value of Nelson waterfront property.
David Leggott on 08 Mar 2009 at 9:15 pm #
623 Rocks Rd is correct. All 9 units sold were reported to REINZ as 1 bedroom units. Of all the homes sold in Nelson in the preceding 12 months (period Dec 07 to Dec 08 – here http://www.reinz.co.nz/reportingapp/default.aspx?RFOPTION=Report&RFCODE=R100) there was only 17 1 bedroom sales reported in total.