If you want to have a bit of fun at the next quiz night then ask someone what they think will be the likely median sales price in Auckland in July or August of this year as well as the likely number of sales? You don’t need to be a expert in such matters as the likely answer will be $850,000 in the case of the median sales price and for sales volumes look no further than the July and August sales figures from last year (1,777 and 1,837).

The fact is the Auckland property market is stuck in that ever repetitive syndrome known as Groundhog day. Whilst just last month I thought I could detect some signs of an upturn in the clearance rate as a lead indicator of market sentiment and activity levels, the hard frosts of winter seems to have killed of those spring buds, leaving us back waking up again on another Groundhog day!

VOLUME SALES

Total property sales in June across Auckland were 1,819. Last year the June sales were 1,879 and back in June 2017 they were 1,822. You get the picture, the Auckland property market is stagnant. Just for fun let’s remember the time back in June 2003 when in that same 30 day period we saw total sales of 3,441, that is 1,622 more sales than this past month. Back in 2003 we had no commentary of a housing shortage and the city’s population was around 1.2 million. Today it’s home to more than 1.6 million people. We are simply not transacting as often as 16 years ago. Investor activity has scaled back massively and the banks are way more circumspect about lending, even though interest rates are so low.

This stagnation of property sales can best be seen in this chart of the moving annual sales for the past 10 years.

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