Mason Parker Mortgagee Marketing Specialist

With Alistair’s access to brilliant real estate data from the Real Estate web portal www.realestate.co.nz he has recently added a good blog comment on where he sees the mortgagee trends

Well worth a read – http://www.realestate.co.nz/blog/latest-mortgagee-sales-data-shows-only-half-the-story.html 

Fundamentally Alistair’s view of the data is that national mortgagee sales are looking like plateauing – he does this by noting the trend that most mortgagee listings generally sell within a short timeframe after listing – and that he has noticed a plateauing of mortgagee listings on www.realestate.co.nz and funnily enough a reduction in the number of people searching for mortgagee sales on www.realestate.co.nz

Perhaps this means that the low levels of mortgage rates – particularly for those current borrowers on floating mortgages – are helping distressed homeowners hold onto their properties.

It seems to be showing a strong increase in mortgagee sales – no secrets there- but the regional differences are interesting.

Auckland appears to have maintained a high level of Mortgagee Sales — this would match the decrease in housing affordability in our largest city. And Wellington had the dubious honour of having the largest growth March 2008 to March 2009.

There seems to be a strong correlation that the further North you go the higher the chance of seeing mortgagee sales – not sure if this is a population based trend but I striongly suspect its a housing affordability trend as incomes nationally ae not too disimilar whereas housing prices are!

Interestingly Levin now has 6 Mortgagee Listings today on www.realestate.co.nz – see them here This is a rise – a month ago there were only four mortgagee listings.
I also ran a quick search on www.realestate.co.nz and found 344 mortgagee sales (by searching using the keyword “mortgagee” …this may include listings with mortgagee as keyword but is all I can  do)

Download the report here

Wednesday 13 May 2009 Harcourts Levin held 7 auctions including 3 mortgagee properties.

The room was chocka with people and atmosphere – 48 people present for the mystery draw – well done to the lucky winner and Mike O’Gorman successfully bid on the charity auction with proceeds going to the Harcourts Foundation for use in the Levin area.

The first auction was a mortagee property – 5 Derby St which sold under the hammer at $186,000 – a great result with multiple bids from both phone bidders and the floor. A brillaint of example of property auctions.

Two Mortgagee properties 4 and 6 Monarch Mews were next - passed in at 215,000 and 220,000 respectively – with multiple conditional offers being presented to the vendor on Friday 15 May.

A great result the traffic through all three properties was strong – with more than 30 groups through Monarch Mews its fair to say “the marketing worked to full effect and tested the market”.

Lets see how negotiations progress…

• Wayne Sutton and Stuart Pescini both called auctions and the crowd responded well to both auctioneers
• 60 people present
• Multiple phone bidders
• The rain held off
• Harcourts Levin salespeople were active in the crowd helping buyers and vendors through the process

Come along on 10 June 2009 – next months auction day – its promising to be worth attending

Crikey there are more mortgagee listings in Levin – in itself this is an alarming statement!

Lets look a bit deeper at the data (as per www.realestate.co.nz on 8 May 2009):

• The total residential listings in Levin is at a level of 423 across all residential property types
• There are 5 mortgagee listings in Levin which is about 1.2% of the Levin Market
• The mortgagee properties available consist of one 1 Bedroom property at 5 Sherwood Place (25% of the four 1 bedroom properties on the market) and  four 3 bedroom properties (4 Monarch Mews, 6 Monarch Mews, 5 Derby St and 22 Mabel St) which is 1.8% of all 3 bedroom prperties

As a Harcourts Levin Sales and Marketing Specialist its very pleasing to see Harcourts are dominating the Auction listings in Levin as they are statistically more likley to sell any Levin property right now. April had 25 Levin Residential Property Sales which was approximately 6% of all Levin Properties achieving success. Harcourts Levin auctions are converting 10-11 times more frequently.

HOT NEWS:

4 Monarch Mews www.masonparker.co.nz/monarch4 and 6 Monarch Mews www.masonparker.co.nz/monarch6 auctions are days away on 13 May 2009.

5 Sherwood Place – just listed see it here - Auction 12.00 Noon 10 June 2009 in Levin