A selection of recent real estate related media excerpts or blogs that I have found interesting...

Last updated 3rd November 2009

The man with 900 properties

If you own rental properties or are a budding property investor then you may find this interview interesting. Fergus Wilson has amassed a portfolio of 900 rental properties since 1995

Searching for property online growing at the fastest rates since 2007

In just the last four weeks there have been more visitor sessions to the major real estate websites in NZ than there are in inhabitants of our country - 4.41 million visitor sessions compared to 4.33 million people.

This total activity is measured across the major 8 websites as reported by Nielsen Online and measured as purely the number of NZ visitors.

The rate of growth over this year-to-date as can be seen from the graph below is the sharpest rise since early 2007 when the property market was in full swing with sales per month running at around an average of 7,800. Today that average is just 5,800 per month some 25% lower; yet interest in viewing property online is actually some 50% higher than that same period in 2007.

The scale of online property searching is staggering - an average day sees over 113,000 unique browsers researching at least one property website. During that time a total of over 4.7 million pages will be viewed and the total time consumer viewing those pages will exceed 122 million seconds - roughly 34,000 hours!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 on www.realestate.co.nz/blog by Alistair Helm.

Newspapers big losers as property searchers stampede to web

Each year around this time there is heated anticipation for the release of the annual Nielsen Real Estate Market Report. This comprehensive survey of property buyers and sellers has become a seminal guidebook to the trends in real estate as it has been undertaken in each of the past 4 years.

The survey covers many aspects of consumer behaviour, attitudes and awareness of the industry and each year new insights and critical trends emerge.

This year one chart from the amongst one hundred pages of the report leaped out and said in a confident and striking manner - LOOK AT ME!

A total of 1,206 people were asked the question:

“Thinking about the different media and other things that you consult for the purpose of researching real estate, how useful do you perceive the following?”

The respondents were shown a list of 14 sources of real estate information - everything from TV and real estate office window displays to magazines, newspapers and the web, in all their different forms. The respondents were then asked to rate each by how useful they though each was. The chart below compares the 2 major competing media - newspapers and specialist real estate websites.

The results are staggering with 95% of people saying that specialist real estate websites were “useful or very useful” as compared to just 49% for newspapers - taking the judgement of “very useful”; less than 1 in 10 judged newspapers as “very useful”, whereas with specialist real estate websites 2 out of 3 judged them “very useful”.

Evaluating all of the 14 media options as to how many had been consulted in the past week equally startling trends emerged, comparing this year to last year.

Right up at the top of the list is specialist real estate websites; up from 69% last year to 78% this year. Other web options of company websites and search engines showed growth at 63% and 38% respectively.

However the print versions of real estate saw significant declines. Specialist magazines remain relevant although falling from 55% to just 46%. Local newspapers fell from 49% to 40% and then far behind was national / metropolitan newspapers down from 43% last year to just 31% this year - this means that now less than a third of all property researchers surveyed consulted metropolitan newspapers in the past week.

These figures are in some ways not that alarming as the rise in traffic to real estate websites has been enormous over the past few years, however, despite this and despite the behaviour of buyers and sellers in using the web as the primary means of researching real estate - the real estate industry still has a love affair with printed publications, demonstrated by the colossal scale of investment of vendors money in print media, with so little relatively being placed in online media advertising of property.

sourced from realestate.co.nz/blog written by Alistair Helm.

Where is the property market

in New Zealand heading??

Below is a slide show presented by Alistair Helm of realestate.co.nz. It gives a good indication as to what is currently happening in the housing market and where we are heading in the next 12 months. Alistair blogs regularly at www.realestate.co.nz/blog.

The key pointers from the presentation would be best be summarised as follows:

Historically the key indicators as to the property market lag market activity anywhere up to 4 months after decision making has occured - the web now provides far more equivalent “real time” information - supply and demand data is within 30 days

   1. Property prices as measured by median price have seen recent rebounds - currently 5% up on a year ago (August)

   2. Based on inflation adjusted prices the current median price represents at worst a 7% decline from mid 2007 prices

   3. Sales volumes are returning, however they still represent historical lows especially when assessed against the total number of dwellings

   4. Current sales volumes would have to increase by a further 50% to return to the long term (20 yr) average of sales based on the % of all dwellings being sold per year (6.2%)

   5. The supply side of the market is beginning to respond to the increased market activity - early indication for September show a significant rise from August (in line with seasonal pick up)

   6. Inventory levels still weak in major metropolitan areas - nationally 33 weeks of inventory

   7. Property searching at all time high - the demand indicator of property website traffic is recording unseasonal highs as buyers actively analyse the market

   8. New property listings show as yet no inflated expectations of price increases

Taking all of these indicators into account and then add some more macro economic indicators and trends and you have some idea of the future of the property market.

A very key issue of the shortage of new properties being built; added to which is the constraints on building contractors as tighter regulations pervades the industry. A further issue is another potential exodus of builders to Australia as that country begins to address an equally large housing shortage. All of these factors point to property prices edging upwards over the next year or two - not a bubble, but enough demand exceeding supply to drive up prices as the economy gets into gear.

Also read what Tony Alexander has said this week into the very real impact of new build market and the potential trade shortage.

Where is the NZ Property Market heading?