Significant Increase in No. of Homes for Sale

Significant Increase in No. of Homes for Sale

35% MORE RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY LISTINGS THAN THIS TIME LAST YEAR

Statistics released by the real estate industry’s official website show record numbers of houses for sale across the country indicating there may be more homes on the market now than ever before in NZ’s history.

www.realestate.co.nz is the largest property website in the country and features almost 90% of all licensed real estate listings.

“At the moment there are almost 57,000 residential properties on the website nationwide, that’s the equivalent of a For Sale sign on every home in Wellington City”, said realestate.co.nz’s Chief Executive, Alistair Helm.

“At this time last year there were 42,500 residential properties for sale, so we’re looking at an increase of 35% of homes for sale – a huge increase.”

“At one stage in December we had 60, 427 residential properties on the website, clearly the highest number we’ve ever had possibly an indication that there are more homes for sale in NZ now than there have ever been”.

“We’ve dropped to around 57,000 now but that doesn’t necessarily mean 3,000+ homes sold in January, in this slowing market I suspect quite a few have been withdrawn, figures out this week by REINZ & QV will be able to tell us that”.

A common international real estate practice is to calculate how long it would take to sell the entire property inventory. Alistair Helm has applied the formula to the website’s inventory over the last year.

“At the beginning of 2007 it would have taken 4 ½ months but that’s dramatically increased, it would take 8 months to sell every house that’s on the market today”.

Looking on a regional level, not surprisingly the analysis shows up some interesting variances:

Property Inventory (months) March
2007 June
2007 Sept
2007 Dec
2007
Auckland 4 5 7 8
Canterbury/Westland 4 5 7 8
Central Otago Lakes 12 16 14 12
Hawkes Bay 5 5 9 7
Manawatu/Wanganui 4 5 7 8
Nelson/Marlborough 5 7 6 6
Northland 15 20 24 23
Otago 4 4 5 5
Southland 3 3 3 4
Taranaki 4 4 7 7
Waikato/BOP 6 7 9 9
Wellington 3 4 6 6
AVERAGE 5 5 7 8

“Immediately you are drawn to the regions of Northland and Central Otago Lakes; both of which are areas with a tourism component and which have been subject to extensive development over the past few years.”

“At the other extreme Otago and especially Southland record the most modest growth in inventory and low actual stock levels”.

“Wellington which is normally considered to be a market immune to peaks and troughs certainly seems to indicate a real growth in inventory from around 3,700 in the first quarter of 2007 to end the year at just on 5,000 properties on the market”.

“The high numbers of houses for sale will not only put pressure on prices, it will put heat on the marketing strategies used as well, vendors will face the challenge of pricing their properties realistically and then attracting the attention of potential buyers”.

For more information click on Alistair Helm’s blog www.realestate.co.nz/blog

ENDS

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