Welcome to this weeks wrap on North Shore property. To view our full weekly email click here.
Sport cancelled this morning? Bit of a shame, but the silver lining, a much more relaxed lead into our Saturdays! Cafe food and coffee still taste just as good when it’s raining! And I won’t have to get changed in the car-park as I rush from Cricket to our first open homes!!!
Here’s an interesting stat I learned yesterday, which is for the country, and hopefully I will have the number for the North Shore soon. Property website realestate.co.nz hit over 1,000,000 unique users last month, which is a record high. That’s over 1,000,000 people searching for property, so even with all the talk of a slow down, and us seeing it on the coal front, clearly people are still looking, For whatever reason it doesn’t look like they are converting though. However with now record low interest rates on offer and a potential easing of LVR’s next week (more on that below) fingers crossed we see all these searchers, become buyers in the near future.
In This Week’s Market Wrap
– Support Movember
– Record Low Interest Rates & Potential LVR Tightening
– Open Homes & New listings
– Auction rates
Movember Open Home Signs
Look at for our November Open Homes signs this weekend. Snap a selfie with one and share it to on facebook.com/shoreproperty and I will donate $10 on your behalf to the November Foundation – to help stop men from dying young.
Record Low Interest Rates + a potential LVR reduction
So much for predictions of risk of interest rates rising and crushing everyone. As banks compete for business we are now seeing the on offer the lowest short term fixed rates, ever! BNZ has a 2 year rate offering at the moment of just 3.99% – which one would assume means an even lower negotiated rate! We are also starting to see cash-backs being offered again which indicated these low rates are a product of competition, not a fall in wholesale lending rates.
We’ve been told for sometime now that the banks have plenty of money to lend, just a lot of restriction on who and how much they can lend. And with the volume of sales continuing to decline one must assume the banks are struggling to hit their targets – hence, competition.
If I were borrowing at the moment, I would negotiate, hard. You should be able to get even lower than the advertised rate. Further with no sign of any tightening of monetary policy in the near future, I would quite comfortable grab the 2 year rate with some confidence that even if it does tighten, within 2 years time, it won’t be by much.
On the LVR’s, well we wait for the RB’s Financial Stability Report next Wednesday, where we expect a further cutting of the LVR’s as the housing market continues to ease, which will help with the struggling sub $1.5m market.
Open Homes & New Listings
Nothing new here, with still over 1900 listings available on the Shore combined with what appears to be less buyers out and about, open homes are not that busy.
56 Visits across 11 Properties last week – Average 5 per listing
Breakdown: 61% European, 29% Asian/Other 90% owner occupiers (either upsizing, downsizing or changing area) 10% investors
Cooper & Co Auctions
With the surge in stock, clearance rates are still being effected but last week remained stable, C&C called 26 Auctions selling 11 at a rate of 42% which still isn’t bad.
B&T called 40, so quite a lot, but they only sold 8 at1 a rate of 20%, which brings our combined rate down to 29%.
The Harcourts current 4 week average sits at 43% sold under the hammer.
That’s it from me, if you have any questions as always just give me a call, otherwise have a great weekend!
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