Housing figures paint a mixed picture

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The latest housing market figures continue to show a mixed picture with the national median house price slipping and the number of days it takes to sell a house creeping up but the number of sales rose.

Friday, September 17th 2004, 5:13AM

by Jenny Ruth

The median house price has slipped from a record $249,000 in July to $247,000 in August, Real Estate Institute figures show, although that was 14.9% higher than in August last year.

Institute president Howard Morley says there was increased demand for less expensive properties in August coupled with a slower market for more expensive properties so the figures don’t necessarily add up to a slowing market.

"While the market appears to have retreated, it has to be considered that July saw a strong increase in the median especially because of a big jump in Auckland median prices.

This month we have seen a bit of levelling off, but the trend is still pretty much intact," Morley says.

While recent interest rate rises may have had some effect, "with an increasing number of people moving to fixed rates … the potential for OCR increase to affect the confidence of the house-buying public is increasingly limited," he says.

However, Deutsche Bank chief economist Ulf Schoefisch says he estimates that while the number of houses sold in August rose 2.1%, that followed a cumulative 8.3% decline in the previous two months.

"We estimate that underlying house price growth has slowed close to zero which is consistent with the latest Reserve Bank forecasts that include the expectation of a 4% fall in house prices in 2005," Schoefisch says.

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