New listings drying up on realestate.co.nz; 'putting upward pressure on prices'

Realestate.co.nz has released its monthly report for June showing the number of new property listings is continuing to fall and the number of weeks of inventory on sale has fallen to an 18 month low of 31.5 from 35.4 in May. It peaked at 52 weeks in February. Asking prices for properties listed on realestate.co.nz fell 0.3% in June to a national mean of NZ$403,107 from the average of the preceding three months. Commentary from the report is below.

The NZ property market has undergone a significant about-face from just 6 or 9 months ago. At that time property sales had slowed to a level of just around 4,400 per month - a record all-time low. As a consequence of this stalled market, inventory levels grew (reaching a level of 52 weeks), property asking prices dropped as did sale prices. Now just 6 to 9 months later the market is experiencing a very different state - sales volumes have picked up (albeit to levels still well below peak of 2006/7), inventory levels are declining at an accelerated rate, just as buyer demand has returned, fueled in part by the receding threat of a free-fall in property prices. Seller expectation of property prices as measured by the asking price of new listings coming onto the market have remained fairly flat at around $400,000 down from the $420,000 level of 2 years ago. Whilst there are always wide regional variations, there is however clear signs from industry feedback that in the major metropolitan areas the drying up of listings is causing buyer pressure, resulting in hotly contested bidding for some properties.

Alistair Helm from realestate.co.nz has also comment further on his blog here. See our charts on residential real estate inventory here. Your views and insights? We welcome comments and any further insights on this article and its source documents in the comments field below. Or if you want to remain under the radar please email bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz and we'll be in touch. We practice a form of collaborative journalism that aims to include the insights and expertise of our readers to improve our articles. That includes clearly identifying any errors and correcting them. We also update articles with relevant new information and commentary and will label our articles Update 2 etc. We know we don't know everything and we know we're not always right. We appreciate your help in constantly improving and deepening the knowledge and debate on interest.co.nz.