Seen in context this sales result is strong as it is only 13% down on the month of September 2006 when the market was by any measure very heated.

On a 3 month moving average basis as represented by the chart below the recent sales for the company are strong as measured against the prior 2 years, indicating as the report from Peter Thompson highlights that the spring traditional “bounce” is occurring. The yellow bars in the chart represent the months of September in each of the past 3 years.

In terms of pricing, the average price fell slightly (3%) from the August figure of $532,023 to the September average of $514,890. This average price is up 4% on September last year and 8% off the peak of the market in December of 2007.

The chart below tracks the past 3 years of average price and year-on-year variance and clearly shows the recent strengthening of prices. A situation that Peter Thompson sees as prices having stopped falling and at the same time not overheating.

The other component of the report was the details of new listings. A reported 1,466 new listings were made by Barfoot & Thompson in the month, up 12% on August. This increase very much reflects the total market picture detailed in the NZ Property Report for September published by realestate.co.nz. The total region  of Auckland had 4,015 new listings added to the realestate.co.nz website in September up 15% on August and up 13% on September 2008.

The sales as shown in the chart below have risen from the trough which perpetuated for much of the 12 months to February of this year when average monthly sales hovered around 550. Whilst this does represent a 50% year on year increase at 830 sales – the figure for August 2006 (936) and August 2007 (765) does provide some perspective.

In terms of average selling price the tracking of price in the region over the past 3 years shows the significant rise through the final year of inflationary pricing in late 2006 / early 2007 followed by the plateauing through the remainder of 2007 before prices began to fall from the peak of December 2007 when the average price reached $559,804.

The current price level of $532,023 represents a 5% fall from peak, somewhat of a recovery from the low point of March of this year when the fall from peak totaled 12%.