Review of the property sales market in the Motueka area for February 2011

February 16
By Alan Atkins, Ray White Motueka

[Editor's note: Ray White Motueka is the Principal Sponsor of Motueka Online, and one item of assistance it provides is a regular, general update on the state of property sales in the area. The reports do not contain any promotion of Alan's company, but are provided purely for informational purposes]

Activity remained muted in the residential property market in January and the number of sales fell below the record low set in January of last year, in the latest statistics released today by the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ).

The REINZ report on sales in January shows a national median price of $340,000 in January, down from $352,000 in December. The number of residential property sales at 3,252 is below the previous low of 3,666 sales recorded in January 2010.

Across the Nelson/Marlborough district the median price decreased from $327,000 in December to $318,500 in January with the number of sales decreasing from 159 to 136.

Interest rates appear to be fairly static, with the general advice being to stay on floating rates but reduce the principle as soon as possible. I take it to mean that we can expect that interest rates will rise as the economy starts moving forwards again.

Looking at the sales of local properties over January the average days on market were 103 and the average sale was 9% above the 2008 capital values.

Our office had a steady January with a stronger than normal level of enquiry over the holiday period. While as usual for this period of year not many contracts were written in January, but what we did write have as a rule become unconditional within 10-5 days.

The number of new listings is up when compared with January last year, with many sellers paying careful attention to recent property sales when setting their asking price. In this muted market attention to the real estate basics of Promotion, Presentation and Price are proving to be essential to affect a sale.

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