No upwards price pressure, agency reports

Barfoot and Thompson’s average sales price in August was $647,647, more than $6700 lower than in July and more than $2200 lower than in June.

Managing director Peter Thompson said: “After a rapid increase in the first quarter of the year, prices have settled down, and there has been no upward pressure on prices for the past two months.”

The August median was $561,500, 4% down on July.

Thompson said there was a bit more choice for buyers in August than there had been for some months.

“New listings in August at 1710 were excellent, and were up 4.5% on those for July. August’s new listings were the second-highest in a month so far this year, and were 20.7% higher than at the same time last year.”

Sales were also strong – 1200 properties changed hands, almost 6% more than in July.

“At month’s end we had 2999 properties on our books. While this is relatively low, it was the highest number for three months.”

There was a drop in the number of homes that sold for in excess of $1 million.

Thompson said: “We sold 118 homes for more than a million during the month, well down from July’s 152 and the 144 in both May and June. There was a far greater focus on the under $500,000 market, with 523, or 43.6% of all sales, being in this segment.”