As the move to Level 1 comes potentially sooner than expected, signs from the market suggest that buyers and sellers are ready to match pace. New data has revealed that both Residential and Apartment sales and listings are slowly starting to climb back up to pre-lockdown levels.

Here’s what you need to know:

New Listings Suggest Market Is Returning to Normal Post-Lockdown

The latest sales figures from Auckland’s largest real estate agency Barfoot & Thompson have given a closer look at how the effects of the lockdown have impacted the market, while also giving us a glimpse that the market – and buyers and sellers – are ready to return to normalcy.

In terms of sales, the agency sold just 396 residential properties in May, which was lower than the 552 it sold in April when the country was mainly in Level 4 lockdown, and 52% down on the 821 properties it sold in May last year. But the median selling price was still robust, rising from $900,000 in April to $914,000 in May but still slightly below its March peak of $925,000.

Barfoot & Thompson Managing Director Peter Thompson spoke positively stating that Auckland reaction to the COVID interruption was in the most part “uneventful” and that due to delays, many sales have yet to complete, “Sales are taking place but given the extended nature of the transfer process, are not yet showing up in completed sales data, and prices are not under pressure.”

This was supported by data which showed that new listings were up quite considerably in the post-covid months, with Barfoot & Thompson receiving 1097 new listings in May, compared to just 239 in April. Stock levels have also remained resilient, with the agency having a total of 3821 residential properties available for sale at the end of May.

Thomson remained hopeful and stated that it will still be a few months until we get a bigger picture on how the market will recover, “it will be another month before the market settles down and for a firmer indication of the future trading pattern to emerge.”

Residential Auction Sales Surge Back to life as Numbers Return

Residential auction activity in Auction rooms are showing some positive signs for the markets future, with reasonably buoyant activity in the last week of May which had a sales rate of 60% which was well up on the 39% sales rate achieved in the same time last year.

Prices also appear to be holding up reasonably well so far, with interest.co.nz able to match selling prices with Rating Valuations (RVs) which revealed that exactly two thirds (67%) of the sales in the last week of May achieved prices that were higher than their RVs, 30% achieved prices below their RVs and 3% were the same as their RVs.

It’s also expected that auction numbers will increase significantly in June as restrictions ease and normalcy returns as agents suggest that a level of pent up demand, built up during the lockdown, is building from people who wanted or need to buy a property reasonably quickly and had the cash available to do so.

-by Ravi Mehta, from Professional Financial Solutions