Blog: The Landlord says...

A report in the NZ Herald earlier this week quoted Westpac economist Doug Steel suggesting house prices had reached fair value. The piece is memorable as many of the economists out there, and some wannabe economists, have been incredibly bearish on the housing market and expect prices to continue their downward slide.

Here are four reasons why I don’t buy into the pessimistic view.

1. Mortgage rates are low and the shorter-term ones are destined to go lower. The Reserve Bank will cut its OCR again (by how much is another question). It will cut as the economy is in a recession and there are no signs of it emerging and the dollar is heading in the wrong direction, undoing previous cuts. Added to that, banks haven’t passed on all of the recent OCR cuts.
2. House Sales are stabilising. While it is always risky reading into data and trying to pick early trends, it seems that on a seasonally-adjusted basis sales have stabilised. There is clearly a lot more activity in the market and that is likely to help stabilise prices, not push them lower.
3. Supply and demand. House construction statistics show there is nowhere near enough construction going on to increase the housing stock, especially when population growth through immigration is thrown in. This can only be a plus for property investors.
4. Falling cost of living. There is a view that people are stretched to meet their home loan repayments. Sure some are, but others and particularly those who have job security, should be okay. Interest rates are coming down, so to is the cost of other living expenses including petrol (compared to last year). On the other side of the balance sheet there are tax cuts. I suspect for the majority of people the squeeze, while there, isn’t as bad as some suggest.

While these are four factors which tend to support the market, there are also plenty of risks out there too. It is important to put these factors into perspective, which on balance seem to me to indicate that we are somewhere near the bottom, but there won’t be a massive uptick either. Rather we are talking about a slow, gradual climb out of the market trough.

A little while ago I commented on the coverage of mortgagee sales in New Zealand. This week there was a useful bit of information put out which was, arguably, the more definitive research with real numbers.

The stories written in the past had been reasonably sensationalist and not particularly scientific. The new survey, from Terralink, is based on registered mortgagee sales.

What is interesting is that the percentage and actual numbers of properties sold by this method is pretty small; 191 properties nationwide in January. But growing.

We shouldn’t be surprised that the number is growing.

The points which are useful to note are that many of the sales are being done by second tier finance crowds, not the mainstream banks. I’m not sure many people knew finance companies were involved in this market.

Secondly there are always winners and losers in these types of transactions. The winners will be the buyers as it seems often the vendor will let the properties go at whatever price they can get.

For investors mortgagee sales are useful to look at, but as we reported in NZ Property Investor Magazine, there can be fish hooks in these sorts of transactions and buyers need to be aware of what is happening.

The other trend we may see is a spike in mortgagee sales while finance companies cash up their loans, and then the mortgagee market will be more focussed around what banks are doing. The message I am hearing across the market is that banks are finding more and more of their lenders are running into trouble or difficulties with repayments, but to their credit (no pun intended) some are setting up divisions within the bank to identify potential problem clients and help them before it is too late.

When it gets to the too-late stage there is little option but to go to a mortgagee sale.

Often my Blogs have taken a more positive view of the housing market than other commentators. This week I’ll share with you a more personal view.

We put our house on the market recently and it is pleasing to say that it sold reasonably quickly at a price which wasn’t anything like the discounted numbers often talked about.

This is interesting as the local market had had one of its worst months ever.

For the first couple of weeks of the campaign a tender was run. While there were a good number of people through the open homes, the results of the tender were poor.

The strategy employed being that we may find someone who falls in love with the house and we “fluke” a great price.

Holding out for a fluke price is a little like gambling, or buying a lotto ticket and hoping to hit the jackpot. Secondly, I suspect it was also done as it is difficult to put a number on the house in this market. Really what I am saying is people are too scared to put a price on.

My advice to anyone is don’t bother with tenders. Buyers don’t like them – and that seemed to be the recurring theme coming through from people who looked at the property.

What was fascinating is that the first open home post the tender period was the best by far. People had a price and had something to work to.

Subsequently there was good interest shown from buyers.

I won’t go through the selling process except to say that the final price was pretty close to what we expected to get (within 1.5% of the lowest).  How to price the property was not easy, and the figure we worked to was somewhere between the RV and what QV Insider suggested.

A view I have expressed before is that there is plenty of action in the investment property sector of the market.

Our house though fitted into the category of a good family home in the higher price band. My take is that people who feel secure in their job and have some equity are looking around to trade up in this market. Essentially for the same reasons investors are active. Prices are ok and finance is cheap.

Also getting finance doesn’t seem that hard for these people, even though bank lending criteria has tightened.

So my one example helps give me faith that the housing market isn’t as sad as others make out.