Timaru Property Report – September 2011
The median house price for Timaru stayed relatively stable with a very slight drop to $222,500 in August 2011, this however is well above the $200,000 recorded in August 2010.
Please note that because of the relatively small size of our market, our median tends to fluctuate substantially. Therefore the long-term trend line tends to be a more helpful indication of what prices are doing.
The blue trend line represents a 6 monthly moving average.
The volume of Timaru house sales has dropped back from 59 in July, to 44 in August 2011. This however is still a jump from the 34 sales recorded in August 2010.
Over the last 12 month period we have averaged 43 sales per month. However the average for the last 6 months is 49, which as the trend line suggests shows a slow increase back towards more respectable volumes.
The average number of sales per month for the previous 16 years (Jan 95 – Dec 10) is 61 sales per month.
The median days to sell dropped significantly from 103 days in July to 69 days in August.
We estimate there are currently 302 houses being advertised for sale in the Timaru residential market. This is a small increase from the estimated 296 last month but is well below the 385 back in March 11. It shows that the number of new listings coming onto the market is still low and bucking the national trend of more increasing listing numbers.
Based upon the last 3 months average number of sales, we currently have approx 6 months supply of stock available in the market compared to 9.5 months supply back in March 2011.
Comments:
Surprise drop in volume.
After July’s highest volume of sales since October 2009 we posed the question – “Is this level of sales here to stay, or was this just a one off?”. Ourpredictionwas“similarlevels-ifnotmoresales”. In this case we have been proven wrong and just goes to show how difficult this market is to predict (even by us so called experts). We still believe that overall volumes are increasing and should continue to slowly rise back to more respectable levels.
As we have mentioned several times now, the major issue facing agents is the shortage of new listings coming onto the market. This is still the case, with the traditional spring flush of listings so far not eventuating. You may also be interested to know that some of the much talked about “Christchurch Buyers” are now starting to show up in our market. It is going to be an interesting few months.
You can download a pdf version here.
September 14 2011 02:32 pm | Property market Timaru and Real estate tips and Timaru Property and Timaru Real Estate