New house listings plunge 34pc in April

[Marc]

New house listings fell 34 per cent in April, but asking prices have remained stable says research from real estate website realestate.co.nz.

It says the total number of new listings last month was 10,453, a fall of 21 per cent on March and a 34 per cent fall on April last year.

Realestate.co.nz chief executive Alistair Helm said the property market had been "a buyer's market for the last 18 months" but there had now been a significant drop in new listings.

"The reduced inventory will start to favour sellers, and could result in upward pressure on prices in coming months," he said.

No part of the country escaped the drop in new house listings. Northland had the biggest fall with a reduction of 56 per cent on April 2008, while Nelson experienced the smallest, down 5 per cent.

There was little change in the prices house sellers were asking for though, with the mean asking prices up to $405,936 in April compared to $405,710 in March.

This April 2008 price is down just 1.7 per cent from the same month last year.

Realestate.co.nz is using a new method of calculating prices, known as the "truncated mean". It says this method, adopted after consultation with economists, provides a more accurate price measure, decreasing the distortion that can be caused by "the influence of extreme values".

See the full report here.

Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/front-page...569805&ref=rss

Cheers

Marc

[revdev]

"The reduced inventory will start to favour sellers, and could result in upward pressure on prices in coming months," he said.

Or...."The stock that is left is crap, overpriced or both and could result in further downward pressure on prices in coming months". Keeping talking it up Al !!

G

[tanmedia1]

Rev,

You're right about there being so much crap on the market. Crap in terms of quality, lifestyle enhancement, and ROI. Why on earth would anyone would want to pay current market prices for these places is beyond me. I know that there are "potential" returns from suburban hovels in low-income neighborhoods but the slum-lord business is one that I'd personally like to stay out of.

I also think Alistair needs to think about the quality of the stock on the market. So Northland has the highest fall in supply. Think about it. Northland is consistently one of the poorer provinces in the country. So the privileged few with coastal palaces withdraw from the market and the mid-priced sellers recoil in horror at falling prices. What do you think we're left with? The buyers on the lower rung still need to pony up a deposit (which I doubt many could do), and to borrow on these places is financial suicide.

[ladyagent]

It is a"talkup" from a "Talkaholic".

[drelly]

So Northland has the highest fall in supply. Think about it. Northland is consistently one of the poorer provinces in the country.

Northland has the highest fall in supply because it has the furthest to fall. I've been watching the numbers on Trademe and they are frightening.

This page shows the total number of property listing by region on Trademe. This morning, it was as follows...

Northland (6652)
Auckland (16145)
Waikato (6949)
Bay Of Plenty (3672)
Gisborne (197)
Hawkes Bay (1366)
Taranaki (872)
Manawatu / Wanganui (2883)
Wellington (3489)
Nelson / Tasman (906)
Marlborough (759)
West Coast (1057)
Canterbury (3452)
Otago (3404)
Southland (1101)

I haven't checked all the regions but it looks that Northland would have the highest or one of the highest numbers of listings per capita of anywhere in the country. Auckland's population is around 1.3m people while Northland's is around 155,000 yet we have over 40% of the listings Auckland does with little more than 10% of the population! Roughly the same listings as the Waikato with a third of their population. It's not a good situation. We're hugely over represented in section sales too. If anyone is looking for a cheap beach section up north, now the the time to buy. Some of them are going for little more than they would have cost to develop.