Listings shortage makes housing a sellers' market, says realestate.co.nz

A shortage of residential house sale listings in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch is an indication that home sellers have the upper hand over buyers ahead of the traditional spring upturn in the property market, realestate.co.nz said in its monthly NZ Property Report. "The arrival of spring typically signals a surge in residential property market activity, but with inventory levels low this year "“ particularly in the three largest centres "“ vendors may be encouraged to increase asking prices," realestate.co.nz CEO Alistair Helm said. However looking at August figures, Helm said an increase in prices had not been seen yet. August asking prices were little changed from July, which reflected a "stable market with no signs of heated property price inflation," Helm said. "If potential sellers continued to hold off listing their properties, however, the shortage of available stock could push prices up over the coming months," he said. The August truncated mean asking price on realestate.co.nz was NZ$397,187, which was still 7% below the peak of NZ$429,033 seen in October 2007.

There were 10,644 new sale listings in August, which was below the expected level, Helm said. This was down from 10,773 in July and compared to 10,860 in August 2008. "The key metrics of the market reflect a very stable position "“ stable asking price, stable level of inventory and stable levels of new listings," Helm said. "Whilst this is a far better position for the market than a year ago there is concern that the slight rise in new listings seen in July matched to a similar level in August may not be sufficient to meet the demand being seen in the market at this time," he said. "Spring is one of the most active periods of the year and with constraint of new listings; the market may not be able to meet this demand without consequential impact on prices. However this scenario is as yet not being witnessed in the asking price expectation which remains steady and still represents a 7% decline from the peak of the market." "The fairly flat level of new listings matched to steady sales level the available inventory (measured in terms of "the number of weeks to clear all the stock of houses on the market") rose very slightly to 32.6 weeks." "The level of inventory on a national basis is up considerably from the lows of 2007 (24 weeks), but down considerably on the highs of 2008 (50 weeks)."