New house listings in April fall 34% - early signs of emerging sellers' market
Friday 1 May 2009, 10:37AM
By Realestate.co.nz
542 views
The number of new house listings in April fell 34% nationwide on the same month last year, as the property market appears to be reaching a turning point. The total number of new listings in April was 10,453, a fall of 21% on March. The data was released today by New Zealand’s leading property listing site Realestate.co.nz, in its monthly survey, NZ Property Report.
According to Realestate.co.nz CEO, Alistair Helm, ``The New Zealand property market has been a buyer’s market for the last 18 months, however this is a significant drop in new listings prior to winter. The reduced inventory will start to favour sellers, and could result in upward pressure on prices in coming months.’’
No part of the country escaped the drop in new house listings. Northland had the biggest fall with a reduction of 56% on April 2008, while Nelson experienced the smallest, down 5%.
The asking price expectation for new listings showed little change however. The truncated mean asking price was $405,936 in April compared to $405,710 in March. The April 2008 price of $412,903 represents a year on year fall of 1.7%.
The truncated mean of asking prices is a new measure adopted by Realestate.co.nz after extensive consultation with economists following the release of the first NZ Property Report last month. The new measure provides a more accurate measure of price, decreasing the influence of extreme values which can distort the more traditional measure of average price.
The full NZ Property Report, as well as further information on the methodology behind the truncated mean asking price, can be found on the Unconditional blog at www.realestate.co.nz/blog.
About Realestate.co.nz
Realestate.co.nz is the official website of the New Zealand real estate industry, and provides the most comprehensive selection of listings across all categories of real estate. Realestate.co.nz lists over 100,000 properties at any one time, representing over 90% of all listings currently marketed by real estate professionals.