Barfoot & Thompson's auction rooms continued to get busier last week with more properties being offered at auction but unfortunately the sales rate continued to decline.
Barfoot's auctioneers offered 135 residential properties for sale in the week from 29 January to 4 February, up from 90 the previous week and 60 the week before that. Barfoot & Thompson is Auckland's biggest real estate agency.
However buyers appear to be remaining cautious at the start of the year and auction sales were achieved on just 36 properties, giving an overall sales rate of 27%.
That was down from sales rates of 38% the previous week and 42% the week before that.
We are now approaching the busiest time of year for the residential real estate market and these latest auction results support a recent statement by economist Tony Alexander that we are in a buyer's market.
Vendors can no longer rely on readily available cheap credit and a lack of listings to drive prices higher and will now need to pay more attention to getting their price expectations aligned with the current market, and focus on choosing an agent with good post-auction negotiating skills to get the best result.
Around the Auckland districts, three of them, Rodney, Papakura and Franklin, had no properties sold under the hammer although the number of properties offered in each district was low, while the sales rates in the other districts ranged from 21% in Central Auckland's leafy suburbs to 36% in Waitakere.
You can the see the results of all of the auctions monitored by interest.co.nz on our Residential Auction Results page.
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