Despite all the hoopla about falling mortgage interest rates, February turned out to be a pretty average month for residential real estate.
But how average was it?
There's not much point comparing it to January because that is such a nothing month for real estate.
For the first half of January the market is still sleeping off the effects of Christmas and New Year. And in the second half there's a lot of new listings and marketing activity, but most of the sales resulting from that occur in February.
So February is always a big month, and along with March forms the busiest time of the year for residential real estate.
So what about this year?
If you look at the graph below, it shows the number of sales reported by the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) in February each year since 2007.
This shows sales in February this year were well up on the previous two Februarys, both of which had particularly low sales.
But if you take a wider view and look at the rest of the graph, then last month's sales look a bit average. And that's because they were.
The average number of sales reported by the REINZ in every February since 2007 is 6289.
In February this year it was 6287, just two sales below the 19 year average.
So by that measure, February this year was a pretty average month. It didn't show any sign of the surge in sales some were predicting lower interest rates would bring.
So what are other measures telling us about the current state of the market?
Below the February sales graph is a table with some key indicators comparing February this year with February last year.
It shows that although sales were were up 3.5%, the total stock on the market at the end of the month was 13.6% higher. That's even though new listings received during the month were down 3.6%, and the number of properties withdrawn from sale during the month was up 14.4%.
And the median price was down 2.3%.
All of that suggests there's still a large overhang of unsold stock sitting on the market, something that tends to benefit buyers more than vendors.
So the March figures will be critical in determining how the market fares as it starts to head into the cooler month. But so far things are looking pretty average and maybe just a little bit soft.
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