Battle of boffins and buyers

In previous Blogs I have commented on the Mexican stand-off between vendors and purchasers when it comes to house sales.

It’s clear both groups have had quite different ideas of what a property is worth and for a while never the twain shall meet. I’m wondering now whether there is a similar sort of stand-off between the so-called experts and the people on the ground.

The experts tend to be people like university boffins and economists who are really good at doing what I call the quantitative analysis; look at data and then make predictions and conclusions. No doubt there is a wide variance amongst these people on how much hands-on contact they have with people in the marketplace.

As a general comment these experts are the ones who get quoted in the press making, what looks like bearish predictions, that the housing market will fall by massive amounts. Naturally they get the headlines and their thoughts become common wisdom.

On the other side are the people who get down and dirty in the property market each day. These are the investors, the real estate agents, property finders and the like. It seems to me, anecdotally, that this group has a contrary view to the experts.

Sure some of the comments, particularly from real estate interests, are overly optimistic.
I’m starting to come to the view somewhere in the middle of this and sense that maybe the housing market has taken the most of its beating and will now stay “flattish” for a while.

What’s making me a little more positive than the experts? A couple of pieces of information released, such as the ASB Housing Confidence survey and the REINZ numbers help. But also some work which we have done with Landlords.co.nz asking property investors what they think has been useful in forming this opinion. Details of this work will be released next week, but it is showing that there is starting to be more interest, if not activity, from people wanting to buy rental properties.

While one commentator has been brave and suggested that the market has turned, I wouldn’t go quite that far. Rather the house price fall has moderated.

Time will tell whether the experts or those on the ground have got it right.