By Bernard Hickey
Auckland's biggest real estate agency group, Barfoot and Thompson, has reported it sold 750 houses in April, which was down 39.8% from 1,246 sold in March and up 3.7% from April a year ago.
This is a significant slowing of the annual growth rate of sales from the previous month, when growth from a year ago was 16.4%.
The average house price in April was NZ$568,018, down 0.5% from NZ$571,076 in March, but up 4.2% from the average in April 2011.
Barfoot and Thompson's Managing Director Peter Thompson said: "Prices are not running hot and prices above realistic valuations are the exception and not the norm."
Thompson said March and April normally represented the high point of summer sales.
"Given the level of buyer interest at present and the low level of choice, prices are likely to hold firm through May," he said.
The Barfoot figures are watched closely because they are first out for the latest month and Barfoots is the biggest agency group in the country's biggest -- and often leading -- housing market.
New listings also fell in April from May, but less than the number of sales. New listings were down 17.6% to 1,266 from 1,537 in March. However, the number of new listings was up 22.5% in April from a year ago.
Total listings were 4,621 at the end of April, down from 4,771 at the end of March and down from 5,580 at the end of April a year ago.
Sales often drop off in April from March as the spring and summer Open home season peters out and school and public holidays (Easter, Anzac Day) disrupt activity.
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Barfoot Auckland
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25 Comments
Strangely banks are not that keen to give me millions of dollars to gamble on the NZX or any index for that matter.
They don't have a problem handing over millions to buy property however.
10% of that is not too pathetic from where I'm standing.
ps - Don't forget to give your pound of flesh to the tax man when you sell your equities.
I would assume that you don't pin a Harcourts brochure to the wall and throw darts at it to select the properties you buy, SK.
Well niether do most Share investors. They research thier investments.
And you are wrong about tax. So long as you arn't in the buisness of trading shares, then no tax is payable when they are sold. Of course dividends are taxable though.
Bugger all listing for fringe areas west of Auckland CBD. On Trademe; Freemans Bay 28 listings, Ponsonby: 21, Grey Lynn: 48 etc.. good properties are being snapped up. Where as Remuera, Parnell and similar areas have hundred and very slow moving.. AGS is nolonger the big fat carrot to buyers (overrated school anyway)
Yes it is overrated. What do some silly pepople think, that text books say something else in different schools? The culture at the school is very good though, but it's not the only high school in Auckland that has that by a long shot.
As for the price of houses just to the west of the CBD, lol, let the shallow fashion victims duke it out with each other. Jemima will show Emma just how special she is becuase she has an imported all white Italian kitchen in her 1900 Ponsonby working class shack. Oooooo!
Most of them vote Green becuase they really care about the envirnoment and sustainability!
Already started to slow down.. We were lucky to flick of ours so quicly, this week quite a few have been passed in auction. Although I am scratching my head "where the hell people got their $$$". The person bought our house is another Aucklander (caucasian).
IMO, that asian snapping up properties is a bit of a hype having spent 4 weeks in Auckland going thur' a number of auctions.
Most of the bidders at the auctions in the inner west seem to be NZ European rather than Asian. And I wouldn't say that prices have slowed. Yesterday a Grey Lynn do-up/tear down sold for $1m (to someone looking to tear down) for 450m2 ish.
Which property was your one Chairman Moa? If it wasn't Wood then you barely had it exposed to the market as I didn't see one matching your description on realestate.co.nz. I still have cash to pay for anything decent in the inner west or Mt Eden/Epsom. Unfortunately good houses in the area are scarce and so are good do-ups, (with so many to buy it's hard to fill the quota of what we need to replace!).
All this was predicted by Olly Newland many months ago and he got criticised for it.
http://www.ollynewland.co.nz/40000-new-houses-needed-the-next-boom/1237/
Who now has the courage to say he was wrong?
And now for the other version of the same story:
Auckland house prices sky high
03/05/2012
The number of houses sold in Auckland dropped last month, but the relatively meagre offerings on the market have kept prices sky-high.
New figures from Auckland real estate agency Barfoot & Thompson show the average sales price for Auckland homes was $568,018 in April, only $3000 below a bumper month in March.
”It shows that March’s big jump in prices over those for February was no one-off spike”, director Peter Thompson said.
”What did change between April and March was the number of homes sold.”
Only 750 sales were made, almost 40 per cent fewer than in March, but on par with the number sold in April last year.
New listings for the month also dipped slightly to 1,266, down 17.6 per cent from March.
”At month’s end we had only 4621 homes on our books throughout Auckland, the lowest number in four months and 17.2 per cent lower than at the same time last year,” Thompson said.
”This underlines the extent to which there is a lack of choice available to potential home buyers.”
...... and after a " bust " , what then ? ...... prices eventually start to rise again ........
Does anyone know of an asset bust that never recovered ?
[...... oops , sorry Bernard ....... I'm being happy again ! ........... must focus upon your favourite painting , the Munchy " Scream " ..........]
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