Christchurch Real Estate: August Update
Christchurch Real Estate Market Comment by Jim Davis, Harcourts South Island BDM
The release of the REINZ market statistics for the month of July make for interesting and sobering reading…. if you read it in isolation.
The actual statistics for Christchurch City read as 428 residential sales for July and a median sale price of $431,000.
The 428 sales is a drop-in number of some 8% in comparison to the previous month, however, as with everything if the data is taken in isolation or without context then it can be interpreted wrong.
For a number of months now we have been talking about low volumes of new property coming on to the market here in Christchurch and around large parts of the country. Quite simply we are running out of property to sell, and so the drop in actual sales numbers has been predicted and expected. If we don’t have it to sell, then …we can’t sell them.
The median sale price has not dropped away and neither has the average days on market.
What is very obvious, at the moment is that as soon as new property is listed, the interest in it is huge, and quite simply a lot can get snapped up and sold quickly. That is why it is vital in this current climate that as the owner of a property you ensure you market your home with a company that can cover the market and potentially get you the best possible price available, not just any offer.
The market is tight purely from a lack of new stock, not from a lack of interest, and don’t let anyone tell you different.
Now let’s compare what has happened across the whole of Christchurch City, to what our very own Harcourts figures for the month of July tell us. While we are not directly comparing apples to apples, our sales figures for the month don’t show an 8% drop in comparison to the previous month, they in fact show a very slight increase, so Harcourts is continuing to perform for their clients. Additionally, our consultants are doing all they can to bring more stock to the market and we have seen a huge 26% increase in listed property this July compared to last July.
What is most pleasing of all is that with the new stock coming to the market Harcourts has listed 27% of it as Auction. We make no apology for our belief that a sale by Auction produces the best and fairest results not only for the owner of the property but is a huge benefit to all purchasers as well, you at least get a chance to view the property and look to purchase if it suits you.
So overall from both sets of data we can see that while the market overall has retracted in the volume of sales, there is a reason, most importantly Harcourts in the same period of time is pushing on to produce the required results for our clients and we will expect to see this reflected in the market share over the next month or so.
There is no doubt that if you require a result in the current market and you want a company that performs then Harcourts offers you that option, with around 450 consultants working across our metro marketplace and all of them actively involved with buyers and sellers on a daily basis we can produce results, you just need to call us to fine out how we can do that for you.
