Your property market cheat sheet

realestate.co.nz has joined forces with Frances Cook on her new podcast ‘Making Cents’, to give Kiwis the latest insights into the property market.

Our resident expert, Vanessa Williams, recently sat down with Frances to tell listeners how she goes about reading the property market using three key metrics:

• New listings
• Stock
• Price

New listings  

New listings are all the properties that have come onto the market during a set period. At realestate.co.nz, we measure and report on this number every month to compare it with the same month the year before. They are not necessarily ‘new’ homes, but they are new to the market that month.  

The number of new listings gives us an indication of how “busy” the property market is that month. It’s important to remember that the market is seasonal, so there are months (such as March and October) that tend to have more new listings than others, which is why we will typically use the year-on-year comparison to get a good gauge of the market.  

New listings up year-on-year? Generally, this means people are more motivated to put their properties up for sale. People will sell property for many different reasons, but as a general rule of thumb, an increase in new listings will signal confidence among sellers.  

Stock  

Stock is the total supply, so all of the homes that are available to purchase during that time - they could have come onto the market in 2007 or 2025.  

Stock is interesting because if it’s growing, that tells us that properties are coming onto the market, but buyers aren’t snapping them up as quickly as they could. However, if we see the stock level decline, that’s a good indication that demand is relatively high.  

Price  

Let’s decode prices for a moment because there are three types of pricing that you'll hear in the market: 

• Asking price – The price a vendor wants for their property. 
• Sale price – The actual price a property sells for. 
• Valuation – Usually a computer-based model that provides an estimated price based on various factors, including recent sales, location, supply and demand.   

At realestate.co.nz, we report on average asking prices. Asking prices lead the trend for where prices are going. So, if asking prices are going up every month, that’s an indication that vendors (and agents) are feeling confident about how much they can sell a property for.  

Over our 17 years of tracking, while asking prices have tended to sit just above sale prices, they follow the same trend over the long term. This shows that asking prices, which are set based on up-to-date local knowledge, are a useful tool for understanding market trends. 

Listen to Making Cents here for the full run down. 

The Making Cents podcast is everywhere you find podcasts, including Apple and Spotify.