House sales by Auckland's biggest real estate firm bounced back a little in May from very low figures in April, but were still down 13.6% on the same month in 2013.
Barfoot & Thompson sold 1109 properties in May, which was a whopping 37% rise from the 811 properties sold in April.
However, April this year was a strange month, containing all of Easter, plus an Anzac Day holiday on a Friday and in the same week as Easter Monday - which is sure to have encouraged many people to take a week's holiday.
A better comparison is with a year ago, when for May there were 1284 properties sold.
The latest figures show that the 'speed limits' on high loan-to-value lending introduced by the Reserve Bank in October appear to be continuing to dampen sales volumes - particularly in the lower price brackets.
In May 2014 B&T sold 473 properties for under $600,000. That compares with 684 sold for under $600,000 in the same month a year ago - a reduction of some 30.8%.
In stark contrast, the number of houses sold for over $1 million rose to 180 in May this year from 142 last year - a 26.8% rise.
The median price, which has jumped all over the place recently, rose to $645,000 from $619,550 in April 2014. It now sits slightly below the record $652,000 set in March. The median is up 13.2% on a year ago, which suggests that overall prices are not being hugely dampened by the LVRs.
The average sales price during May was $702,966, down from $708,603 in April this year and that was down from $725,728 in March. But the average has been jumping around a lot as well.
Auckland particularly has been very short of new listings and this appears to be continuing.
B&T managing director Peter Thompson said new listings at 1318 were the lowest in three months, and down 19% on those in April.
"At the end of May we had 3498 properties on our books, the second lowest number for more than 10 years."
Thompson said overall the market was "in line with season activity and we are likely to see a further cooling with average and median sales prices falling back slightly over the winter months".
In a research note that came out at the start of the week - before release of the B&T figures - BNZ senior economist Craig Ebert said that even if the B&T sales had remained low "bear in mind that this will be at least partly owing to New Zealand’s migration trends".
Net gains from migration are soaring - set to hit an annual rate of 40,000 this year. This is principally due to fewer Kiwis moving abroad.
Ebert said the fact that fewer NZers were moving would “naturally” stifle the rate of house listings – plausibly in order of many thousands – compared to what a “normal” rate of migration would supply for sale to the housing market.
"And, lets’ face it, a lack of new listings has been a common lament over the last 12 months or so – the period over which migrant departure rates have slumped most noticeably."
He said this "dynamic" might help explain why house price pressures haven’t disappeared as much as sales alone would normally have implied - and why any moderation in home sales could be "quite the wrong indicator to economic growth at the moment, given they at least partly reflect a whole lot of folk deciding not to leave the country, on the grounds that the local economy’s prospects are looking relatively strong".
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