New Zealand State of the Market

This current level of activity is likely to result in full calendar year sales in excess of 60,000. This would be up 7% on the prior year; however this level of sales is far below the peak of the property market (now a somewhat distant memory) of 2004 when in excess of 120,000 properties were sold in that year. The slightly lower level of listings in October are now judged to have been influenced by the Rugby World Cup with sellers possibly hesitant to list at that time preferring to wait until the event was over before marketing their properties. It is still though noticeable the extent to which this year has seen a much lower level of new listings than 2010, so far this year 116,016 new listings have been brought to market 11% lower than last year. With this new flow of listings has come what can be considered to be a confident position by sellers on asking price; which whilst slipping slightly in the month continues to show a slow but steady increase over the past few years. This confidence on the part of sellers is certainly supported by the rate of sale of property which is being shared by real estate agents in their daily contact with the public, and can also be seen in traffic to online listing sites which has seen an aggregated increase this year of 6% with over 187,000 daily visitor sessions across all sites (Nielsen Online).