Thursday 6th of November 2008

Over the next few days we are going to start seeing the latest house price sales and volume numbers and I am sure they will be eagerly awaited.

One of the trends in the housing market is that normally, come spring and summer, there is a pick-up in sales activity. After a sad winter, where volumes have been tiny and prices falling, there is plenty of angst building over whether there will be a turnaround.

I saw a graph the other day which compared site traffic on one of the big real estate websites and compared levels to the past two years.

What grabbed my attention is that it showed there was more activity on the site coming into spring this year, in line with trends of previous years. The assumption being that this increased site activity could be a precursor to an improvement in the market.

However, it appears to have been stopped dead in its tracks recently, September 17 actually. Since that date activity has fallen off noticeably. The conclusion being that this was not a good omen for the market.

Added to that there is another highly negative report from an economist today, saying “If there was one time in a lifetime to be negative about property market prospects, especially residential property, this is it!”

Another interesting story this week was Alistair Helm at realestate.co.nz suggesting the Waikato property market may be a ‘bellweather’ region. Statistics show Waikato was one of the first regions to go into the slowdown.

I have no crystal ball of what will happen, but there is anecdotal evidence things may not be totally awful. Several people – and not the regular real estate industry cheerleaders – have noted that things have picked up a little.

Just driving around it is evident there is plenty of stock in the market and it appears an increasing number of sold signs are going up.

It seems like a time to be very cautious out there, and one would think that it is a buyers’ market at the moment. Whether that is happening or not will become clear over the next week when the reports come in.