The latest house sales figures appear to confirm a modest slowdown is underway with both the national median house price and the number of homes sold falling in June and the number of days it takes to sell a house continuing to creep up.
Monday, July 19th 2004, 9:34AM
by The Landlord
The Real Estate Institute figures show national the median house price slipped from $248,000 in May to $243,000 in June.
Institute president Graeme Woodley attributes this decline to the impact of heavy sales of lower priced apartments in Auckland. The median price in Auckland slipped from $339,000 in May to $323,710 in June. However, the number of sales in Auckland also fell from 3,203 in May to 2,940 in June.
Nationally, the number of homes sold fell from 9,416 in May to 8,367 in June. Darren Gibbs, senior economist at Deutsche Bank, says this turnover figure is 13% below the average for the past year but it is still 15% above the average turnover during the past 10 years.
Woodley says the slowdown in sales is due to rising interest rates and the traditional winter slowdown.
"Values are holding up relatively well and, despite the lower level of activity, there doesn’t apeaar to be any significant decline in values around the country," he says.
