Auckland, Queenstown housing sellers' markets
Lower levels of new listings keep prices up.
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Auckland and Queenstown are now being viewed as sellers' markets for housing, as stronger sales combine with lower levels of new listings, the Realestate.co.nz said..
"The prolonged sluggishness of new property listings, which has been evident for nearly 2 years, has at last seen a tip in the balance of the property market from favouring buyers to favouring sellers," the website said in its latest NZ Property Report, published today.
Nationwide new listings were down 3 percent from April and 16 percent from a year earlier to 9898 in May, although on a seasonally adjusted basis there was a 1 percent rise from April to May.
On a 12 month moving basis the number of new listings in the past year of 127,843 is down 12 percent from a year earlier.
The inventory of unsold homes was down 12 percent from April and 1 percent from a year earlier to 47 weeks in May.
With the relative strength of sales in March and April, a clearance was starting to be seen of what had been a high level of unsold houses on the market in the past 18 months, realestate.co.nz.
The truncated mean asking price fell 4 percent from a month earlier to $414,308 last month, although seasonally adjusted the fall was 2 percent. That indicated a degree of uncertainty among sellers.
In Auckland, the number of new listings was up 3 percent from April but down 11 percent from a year earlier at 3417, while the inventory was down 11 percent from April and down 20 percent from May 2010 to 30.6 weeks.
New listings in Canterbury remained weak following the February earthquake, with 1188 new listings in May, down 29 percent from a year earlier.
ASB economist Christina Leung said that while new house listings looked to be slowly coming onto the market, the improvement in housing turnover meant the total level of housing inventory remained contained.
As a result, house prices continued to hold up reasonably well.
NZPA
Wed, 01 Jun 2011
Wed, 01 Jun 2011
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Auckland, Queenstown housing sellers' markets
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