As the days get shorter, many home owners put thoughts of selling aside. After all, winter’s the time when real estate agents pine for summer conditions, buyers stay home and prices plunge until the sun begins to shine again… Right?

Actually, winter can be a great time to sell your home – providing, of course, that you have a quality property in a sought after location. Why? For a few good reasons:

Less Competition
Generally speaking, there are fewer houses on the market in winter. If you’re a seller that means less competition from other properties. Quite simply, if there aren’t as many houses for sale in your suburb, buyer demand will concentrate around the few properties that are available – including yours.

Stronger Prices
For quality properties, the concentrated demand that comes with a shortage of listings will often drive prices up. This is particularly true when it’s already a tight ‘seller’s market’, as is currently the case in many parts of Auckland.

Reduced Marketing Spend
With fewer properties on the market, there’s not just less competition on the ground, but also in the real estate listings. So, if you’re selling your house in winter, you may get away with spending less on advertising, while at the same time being found more easily.

The ‘Warm, Dry’ Edge
Showing a home that is well insulated and heated in winter is a huge competitive advantage – particularly with older houses. If buyers are currently living in a property that is cold and damp they will place a premium on a home that is warm and dry.

Only the Committed Venture Out
When it’s miserable out, only motivated buyers do the open home rounds. That means your real estate agent is less likely to have nosey neighbours taking a gander, and more likely to be dealing with qualified buyers. Now that’s got to be a benefit, right?

So, if you’ve been thinking of selling your house, don’t give up just because it’s winter. Talk to us about we can get a red hot price out of the chilly season. About The Property Market The Property Market is a full service real estate agency built to deliver a better experience for buyers and sellers. Think real estate, only reinvented. · Our Ponsonby real estate agents operate within a 20 minute radius of Freemans Bay. · Our real estate agent commission rates are innovative and competitive. · Our focus on customer service is second-to-none. So, if you’re thinking of selling your house, give us a call.

As we roll through October the housing market trends which were published this week have, for the most part remained unchanged. The market is still firmly leaning towards sellers as we mentioned last month.

Tony Alexander, chief economist at the Bank of New Zealand this week released the October BNZ REINZ Residential Market Survey. While he noted no major changes in trends over the past month, he did present an interesting finding: The numbers of investors looking at real estate is rising.

This finding also reflects what we here at The Property Market have been seeing when we show homes. That there are in fact, a rising number of investors active within the market looking to buy rental properties for investment.

What does this mean for you?

For buyers:

Unfortunately it’s not particularly good news for buyers. With greater numbers of investors appearing, there will be greater competition for the stock of residential property currently available. This will affect first home buyers, mainly because investors tend to have deeper pockets and may be prepared to pay more. Investors tend to have their finance established before making offers and they may also have greater equity, which pushes up the price they can afford to pay.

For sellers:

However the increasing number of investors is definitely good news for sellers. The main benefit to sellers is a much wider pool of enquiries for every house on the market. The result of this is greater competition for the available properties and quicker buying decisions.

We help you analyse the news for the real estate market by sending you summary of important updates that affect our business, and your property:

Tony Alexander, the Chief Economist at the Bank of New Zealand last week released the BNZ-REINZ Residential Market Survey for September. His message is that it is still, for the most part a seller’s market.

Hooray! If you’re selling your home, you should achieve a good price; buyers are queuing up and we’ve seen some sales significantly over-asking price recently.

What does this mean for buyers?

We know the property market and when you work with us, we do our best to give you the depth of our experience and tips of the trade to help you create the best outcome for your personal situation.

If you’re a buyer in the current market, here are a couple of key bits of information that you can use in your negotiation:

1. Always ask for the Sale and Purchase Agreement to be made up on the 9th Edition. This is the latest version of this document and it provides a greater level of protection and transparency for buyers, including a building inspection with a 10 working day timeframe as a standard clause.
2. If you find a property you’re interested in buying but you need an afternoon to think it over or some time to talk to your solicitor, ask the salesperson to prepare a draft of the Sale and Purchase Agreement. Why? By making this request, you are sending a very clear signal that you’re seriously considering the property and it obliges the salesperson to come back to you if anyone else makes an offer in the interim. This buys you time and with no risk or cost to you and because it’s only a draft version of the agreement, it cannot be signed by either party.

So, even though it’s a seller’s market (and this isn’t likely to change anytime soon), there are still things buyers can do to protect themselves.

If you need any guidance throughout your buying process, give us a buzz. We’re always happy to assist if we can.

Unless you’ve been living in a coal bunker (or Timaru) for the last few months, you’ll no doubt have heard of the Waterview Connection.

This new major arterial route has finally begun construction and Auckland Transport is calling it their largest, most challenging and most expensive project to date. Comprising 2.5km of tunnel, the project includes 4.8km of 6-lane motorway through and beneath the western suburbs of Avondale, Mount Roskill, Mount Albert and Waterview and it will link up State Highways 16 and 20 to create a motorway ring route around the city.

My feeling is that this is a good thing. Most of the project is a tunnel so the impact on the environment above ground will be negligible, journey times will improve and will it ease the pressure on State Highway 1. Best of all, it means the implementation of new walkways and cycleways along the reserves and creeks that line the route and improvements to the streams with the formation of features like weirs and pools to create a more enjoyable environment.

Some of these areas have become a little neglected – partly through not having certainty around the final route for the project – but my guess is that we will now start to see these areas improve. Property developers have already moved into areas like Avondale Heights and Mount Roskill in anticipation of these markets opening up.

You can get a stack of information about the project here and by calling the freephone number 0508 TUNNEL. This number is answered by a brilliant guy called Gez who will be able to answer any queries or concerns.

So you know you want to move house – the really difficult part for many people is to figure out the suburbs where you actually WANT to live and that FIT with your way of living.

By following our simple guide below we will help you narrow down the locations that are possible fits for your lifestyle.

1. What is your day like?
Take some time to write down what a normal week day is like for YOU. Where do you need to get to? How long are you prepared to let it take you to get there? If you are a “as quickly as possible” person, that will be a shorter amount of time than for others who don’t mind a longer commute (we’re all busy!)

2. Print out a map of the city with the residential suburbs

Take a pencil and a bit of string and draw a radius circle around the point you need to get in and out of most easily – this is usually your place of work.
Now, don’t forget to think about your partner and the kids’ schools and where they have to drive to. This will give you 2 circles on your map.

3. Inside the overlap of those two circles are the areas where you should FIRST LOOK. This ‘venn diagram’ shows the places that suit both of you best. The further out from the overlap that you move, the more one of you will be inconvenienced or have to change your lifestyle to accommodate living in that suburb.

Now, that was easy!

4. The hard part now comes when money is added to the equation.
What you can afford, how much the average house or apartment is in each suburb will help you create a short list of possible suburbs where you could choose to live.

Choosing Auckland suburbs if you work in the City
There are some areas that we notice performing very well in terms of the residential property your dollars can buy. These would be The Property Market team’s best pick for people working in the centre of Auckland:

• The bottom end of Sandringham Road where it hits Mount Albert Road
• The north half of Mount Roskill around Duke Street and the Big King Reserve
• The area around New Windsor Road which is flanked by Blockhouse Bay Road on the western side and Tiverton Road on the south side because the Waterview connection will improve transport to this area
• The corridor of Blockhouse Bay Road, especially the north end as this will benefit from the new cycleways and walkways that will be implemented in the reserves that dot this area
• Te Atatu Peninsula, especially streets on the northern side of the roundabout at Harbour View Road

Also focus on some of the really accessible and affordable parts of the North Shore, including Glenfield, Hillcrest, Northcote and Forrect Hill.

Want to know more about which streets in these suburbs are the best? Contact us and we’ll share our up to date knowledge with you and if you have a map handy when you call, we’ll do our best to give you some really good insight into what’s going in your area.

In comparison with a national average of 41 days, Auckland properties have consistently sold in around 30 days over the past 5 years. Our faster market is driven by the number of buyers outweighing the number of properties for sale, the favourable lending conditions and the shortage of new dwellings being built.

So is this simply a bubble that will in due course burst? Economists suggest not and they even indicate that property values are likely to increase further. Despite being in the depths of winter, we haven’t seen the traditional slow down in activity that we would normally see at this time of year and Auckland City’s median house price in June was a healthy $556,000.

It’s widely agreed that the factors that create the current market conditions are unlikely to change; our population is continuing to grow, building activity remains weak, interest rates are staying low, and there is a continued lack of listings of quality properties.

As a result of the hot market, we’re seeing a strong return to the auction process; 27.3% of all June sales in Auckland were auctioned, compared to 16.9% in June last year and given the current market conditions, this is likely to continue.

One of The Property Market’s great selling points is our low commission fee (just 2 per cent + GST). The reason we can charge so little is because we’ve been a bit clever about the way we run our business. Many low-fee agencies are based on the traditional real estate model (which has high attendant costs), and low fees are their attempt to gain market share. These agencies are fine when the market is buoyant, but when the market slumps they can really suffer – just look at The Joneses.

The Property Market isn’t a traditional real estate company.

When I was developing the business model for The Property Market, I looked at how we could create an agency that was light on day-to-day expenditure. One of the main costs I identified was the running of high street branches.

In the deep, dark past, before the arrival of the internet, high street visibility was essential. But in our digital age, a “virtual” presence is far more important (and cheaper) than an office on main street. Engaging with clients online means we don’t need to pay for expensive office space, desks, computers or an admin person to chase up paperwork and do the filing. This leads to lower overheads, and this is reflected in our fee.

Another way in which we have cut costs is by choosing to use voice over IP technology, and we make our calls over the internet. This significantly cuts the cost of calling, and means we don’t have huge monthly phone bills to worry about.

By being a little creative, we have developed a way of doing business that’s far more efficient and cost effective. Our lightweight, sustainable business model future proofs us against downturns in the market, and means we can pass savings on to our clients.

It’s a win-win situation!

If you’re thinking about buying property in West Auckland, it’s worth checking out the North Western Widening and Improvements section of the Auckland Motorways website. Planned improvements include:

- The addition of one or more lanes in both directions between St Lukes Road and Royal Road
- The improvement of the Te Atatu and Lincoln Road interchanges
- Bus lanes and improved pedestrian and cycling access along the motorway
- Raising of the Causeway between Waterview and Rosebank Road to prevent flooding

The planned improvements could make the journey between the CBD and places like Te Atatu Peninsula and Henderson a whole lot easier where the interchanges are badly out of date with the current traffic volumes. As these changes seek to reduce travel times they will more than likely also do their bit to improve property values in West Auckland.

We appeared in an article in today’s Herald on Sunday (lead feature in the Business section) and it’s thrown up a few things I thought were interesting to touch on. Overall the article is incredibly positive and supportive and it puts forward the thought that the time is right for a new type of real estate agency, one whose fee is determined by its business metrics.

This for me is a key point.

Unlike other low cost models that have gone before us (like The Joneses) our fee is simply a reflection of our business model rather than our whole story. It costs less than the net revenue from one sale to run our office every month and of course as we grow this could change, but the ratio between income and overheads will always remain my major focus because it’s a fundamental part of our story.

Our fee is also a reflection of how our role as salespeople has changed. As I mention in the article, the internet has changed the way people buy and sell. Buyers can now be as up to date with market movements as salespeople – they’re on the ground talking to salespeople, going to auctions and seeing the prices property fetch. Within an hour of putting up a sold sticker I can usually guarantee a buyer will call to find out what price it sold for as part of their research.

Of course our primary role is and always has been to get the best possible sale price for our clients. My belief again is that the internet has created a fundamental shift in how we do this – the vast majority of properties can be promoted online so our role these days is to market a property to its best potential, bring the resulting buyers to the vendor and provide recommendations that create the right outcome for both parties.

Our secondary role is to act as the mediator who knits buyer and seller together and guides the transaction safely over the line. So much can go wrong in transacting property – from title details, to odd things on LIMs and discrepancies in building reports – that it often takes an intermediary to sit between both parties and negotiate to bring them together.

Another viewpoint the article puts forward is that it’s best to go with an established agent in an area in order to get the best possible sale price, either because they know the maximum possible sale price for a property or because they have the buyers. Again, in my view the internet has changed this rule of thumb. Gone are the days of salespeople owning buyers – buyers are loyal only to TradeMe, Realestate.co and other trusted sources of property data like QV – and every one of our sale prices has been in line with the recent market data. In fact in a few cases we’ve achieved some of the best sale prices on a street so I can’t help but think that being a fresh pair of eyes in an area is a good thing!

The reality is that selling a property is a process and the process is the same every time. Sure you need to understand the intricate benefits of a particular area (school zones, rush hour traffic movements, local amenities and events etc) but we make it our business to get up to speed with this information pretty quickly.

My view is that previous low cost business models have failed for simple and logical reasons. Either the service they provided wasn’t particularly good or in the case of The Joneses, they appear to have over-capitalized by launching with four regional offices and huge staff costs (including an in-house production studio and salespeople on big salaries.) Who’s to say that if The Joneses had started smaller they wouldn’t still be around today? If the idea had worked, they would have changed the real estate model forever.

Sales roles in any other industry are based around a remuneration structure that appeals to both the client and the salesperson. My ambition is to make real estate a credible profession that buyers and sellers see value in. To do this, I aim to grow a model which employs intelligent, well trained salespeople on a base salary and a commission bonus when they make a sale.

What we do is hugely significant in the lives of our buyers and sellers. To use James Eivers (my first salaried Account Manager) words when he started working at The Property Market, “Short of delivering people’s babies, selling their homes should be the most honourable profession around.”

Bless.

This week The Economist released their annual assessment of housing markets around the world which concluded that “…home prices are overvalued by about 25% or more in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, New Zealand, Britain, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden…”

You can read the full article here: http://www.economist.com/node/21540231 and then it’s worth referencing Tony Alexander’s weekly email newsletter which provides a more useful and insightful view of the future of houses prices in NZ: http://www.bnz.co.nz/static/www/docs/weekly-overview/w2011-12-08.pdf

The good bit starts on page 8 and gets really good on page 12.