Understanding the NZ Property Report

Successful real estate agents and salespeople have one thing in common – they’ve got their finger on the pulse of their local property market. Keeping an eye on what’s selling, how fast and at what price is all part of the job. 

Knowing the ins and outs of your local market can be broken down into four key areas.

• The basic facts and forces that shape your local economy. Perhaps dairy is the backbone of the community, or a growing industry like tourism is taking over? Maybe there’s a new NZTA highway going through your area, or a commercial park being built, that’ll affect the town and its businesses? 
• What makes your town special. As a local expert, you know the community better than most. You understand the charms and quirks of the area and what makes it such a great place to live. 
• Staying on top of the latest market data. Keeping an eye on ‘sold’ stickers as they go up around town is one thing, but great agents know where to find the latest market information.
• How to use that knowledge to benefit your clients and customers. After all, it’s all about your buyers and sellers, right?

As the only provider of real estate data in real time, realestate.co.nz offers valuable property market information that’s not available from other sources. Our New Zealand Property Report is released on the first day of each month and is free to access. 

What makes the New Zealand Property Report different is its timeliness. Instead of featuring sales data from three months ago, or computer-generated estimates, our report tells you exactly what’s happening in your region, in real time. 

We know that many top agents have the release date pencilled into their diary every month.

 

Understanding the New Zealand Property Report

If you’re an agent or salesperson wanting to take advantage of the free data available through the New Zealand Property Report, here are the key terms you’ll want to understand. 

• Average asking price. This is not a valuation - it’s an indication of current market sentiment. Statistically, asking prices tend to correlate closely with the sales prices recorded in future months when those properties are sold. By the time recorded sales data is published, this information is months old, so by looking at average asking price, you’ll get a better idea of what the market is doing right now.

• Housing stock. The housing stock map shows the total number of residential properties that were for sale on the penultimate day of the month. It provides a snapshot of how many homes were available for purchase at a point in time. 

• Inventory. This is a measure of how long it would take, theoretically, for all the houses currently listed to “sell out” (if no new properties came onto the market). It gives you an idea of the rate of turnover in the market. For example, a low inventory level of five weeks shows that a region is in hot demand, with properties selling quickly. 

• New listings. This measure is a record of all the new listings added to realestate.co.nz in that calendar month. As realestate.co.nz reflects 97% of all properties listed through licensees, this gives a representative view of the New Zealand property market. If new listing numbers are low and you’re struggling to get more properties on your books, this data can be reassuring. However, if new listing numbers are climbing, but your client levels are low, now might be a good time to dust off your marketing strategy or get door-knocking.

 

Other terms we use

• Seasonally adjusted. This is a method used to better represent the core underlying trend of the property market in New Zealand. This is done using methodology from the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research.

• 80% truncated mean. In order to provide statistically relevant asking prices, the top and bottom 10% of listings in each area are removed before the average is calculated. This is called a ‘truncated mean’ and is done to prevent exceptional listings from providing false impressions. For example, if a luxurious $5,000,000 mansion is listed in a small region with a typically modest asking price, this would throw off the numbers, so we scrap it from the equation.

 

Where to find the New Zealand Property Report

The New Zealand Property Report is published on our blog on the first day of the month. It’s also sent out in an email to all real estate agents, salespeople and realestate.co.nz subscribers. If you’re not currently receiving our emails but would like to sign up, contact marketing@realestate.co.nz.

The report can also be downloaded as a print-ready PDF file.

View past New Zealand Property Reports here.