Wonderful .
Accept my sincere thanks and appreciation

John ,

http://www.dirking.net

Jobs – companies – real estate – engineers – petroleum company

4,489, you were nearly spot on. Although its still over 30% down on a year earlier, it appears that house sales volumes are finding a base.

It is important to seasonally adjust the numbers first – March 2008 was easily the worst SA month on record, even if we get that low July figure. However, March was missing two trading days (because of Easter). However, even if you average March and April, the seasonally adjusted figure for that period would be worse than a July with 3,315 sales (only just though )

“July 2007 was the first month of the stalling of the market”

The market started to slow in March 2007 – but it start to slow quickly in July, that is true. It would be hard to sustain 50% volume reductions on a year earlier, given how quickly sales fell over the second half of 2007

“I would be expecting around 4,500 for July”

That would be the strongest seasonally adjusted month since February (I’m guessing) – however, consumer confidence, petrol and food prices, and even listings growth, have cooled since then. That seems like a big number to me – I guess we will see next week

Yes, in seasonally adjusted terms it is usually a little bit lower I’d say just under 4k sales in July will be about on par with June, taking into account seasonal factors. If the number is much below 3.7k then i’d say activity is starting to stall a bit more, over 4.3k activity is picking up. However, even if activity is picking up, we’ll have to look at prices to see if it is a increase in buyer demand or a willingness on the part of sellers to meet the buyer on lower prices

I’m glad they mentioned the apartment sale, as it helps us distinguish between the trend and one-off factors – the trend tells us that sales remain sluggish. This is probably a good thing in the current economic situation, as a pick up in sales would probably require a fair cut in prices given the gap between buyer and seller valuations in many areas of the domestic housing market.

However, I get the feeling they only mentioned the sale in order to justify lower prices, rather than as the result of wanting to promote the dissemination of information

My feeling is that the apartment market in Auckland is nearing its trough (depending on the outlook for the remaining finance companies) and as a result, the apartment block sale was probably fairly heavily discounted. I’m picking the annual house price fall to be closer to 2% (July quarter on July quarter) when the figures come out next week.