Message #7 From:
fedrikhof Date: August 23, 2008 06:58:18 AM
Enough evidence to predict property market is warming up
Calling a turning point in a market is a risky thing to try and do,
but when it comes to property sales there is now compelling evidence
that the market is warming up again following some of the slowest sales
months of the last decade.
Leveraging multiple sources of data provides robustness to this prognosis:
1. Website visitor activity in line with 2007 despite earlier fall off
The level of visitor sessions from domestic browsers to a basket of
real estate websites has shown a tenacious attraction - defying the
doomsayers of the media. Averaging around 325,000 sessions per week,
this is pretty much line-ball with this time last year when the pace of
the market was considerably more active. The graph below tracks this
basket of 6 websites through 2006/ 2007 / 2008. The post
earlier in the year sited the striking coincidence between the timing
of extensive media coverage by prophesiers of a property crash and the
fall off in traffic to these websites back in late February early
March, a position from which a more stable level of engagement has
followed.
Now the key point in this collective analysis is market liquidity,
there is no inference for property prices. The current analysis
provided by the Real Estate Institute’s sales and median price data up
to July show the median price stagnant in the range $340,000 to
$350,000 a position it has held now for over 16 months with the
exception of just 3 of those months. Does this tell us that property
prices are definitely holding their own or has the sales decline so
significantly altered the mix that the median can remain static whilst
underlying prices change?
