A high level of new residential property listings in March, along with static sales volumes, means the backlog of unsold homes nationwide would take a year to clear at current sales rates, the real estate industry says.But ASB economist Jane Turner said t
A high level of new residential property listings in March, along with static sales volumes, means the backlog of unsold homes nationwide would take a year to clear at current sales rates, the real estate industry says.
But ASB economist Jane Turner said that estimate appeared to be overstated, with ASB's seasonally adjusted estimate for March putting the overall housing inventory at 11 months.
In its monthly NZ Property Report, published today, industry website realestate.co.nz said 14,408 new listings were added to the market last month.
While that was slightly down from February, sales remained static and as a result the number of unsold listed homes had grown to 55,623, realestate.co.nz chief executive Alistair Helm said.
As measured by the number of weeks of sales needed to clear properties on the market, the inventory level of unsold houses had lifted to 53 weeks, up 54 percent in three months.
A sharp divide had opened between urban and provincial areas, with the stock of unsold listed houses in provincial areas rising to 70.1 weeks of inventory, while the three major cities recorded inventory of 39.8 weeks.
Mr Helm said the property market had become indisputably even more favourable to buyers, but sellers appeared to be in denial.
The asking price for new property listings in March rose slightly, to a truncated mean of $422,648, and was now only about 1 percent below the peak of the market in October 2007, he said.
The NZ Property Report said the inventory of unsold homes had risen during the past 10 months, slowly at first but accelerating in the past three months as the rate of sales slowed. The average monthly sales total over the past three months was 4551.
At this time last year the inventory levels were on the way down, having peaked at 56.9 weeks in February.
Ms Turner said the pick-up in the inventory measure represented weak housing demand and a very low level of sales, rather than a strong surge in listings.
Listings were typically strong in February and March, and the increase was much more muted when seasonal effects were removed, Ms Turner said.
The number of new listings seasonally adjusted, while rising, remained at a relatively low level. As a result, the total inventory of house listings remained reasonably steady.
The data suggested little sign yet of a rush to sell off investment properties in response to proposed tax changes, she said.
"The rise in total housing inventory pushes the balance in the housing market back towards a buyers' market, and as a result we expect prices to remain subdued."
