‘It was an active month for sales, with 764 homes being sold, but this demand did not translate into major price increases,’ said Peter Thompson, managing director of Barfoot & Thompson.
At $536,069 the average price for the month was up 1.2% on that for January, and up 2.7% compared with February last year which shows that prices are edging up, but only at a modest rate.
The number of homes sold in February was up 11.9% on January’s number and just under 24% higher than in February last year. The number of homes listed in February was 1,552, up 50.5% on those for January and this contributed to sales numbers increasing. The number was in line with the number of new listings in February last year.
‘It is also a normal part of the regular market fluctuation for prices to increase in February over those for January. The market segment where the most noticeable change took place was in $1 million plus housing. In February we sold 41 homes for in excess of $1 million, compared to 29 in February last year, and this followed on the sale in January of 40 $1 million homes, nearly double the number for the previous January,’ explained Thompson.
‘You have to go back to the peak selling year of 2007 to find more $1 million homes sold in the first two months of a new year,’ he added.
‘The number of homes listed was not out of the ordinary for a February. At the end of February we had 4,917 properties on our books, the lowest number of listings we have had at this time of the year for five years. Lack of listings is still holding the market back from being more active,’ said Thompson.
