Carrara, Nerang and Highland Park Property Market Update

Glenn Batten | 23rd November, 2009
Tagged: carrara, for sale, highland park, nerang, property, real estate, statistics, under contract | Make a Comment »

Market Opinion

The past 12 to 18 months for our economy and that of the world has been unlike any we have seen for a generation. It is probably understandable then that the property market is not is also not following the well worn path of previous years.

Traditionally Spring and the early Summer months provide an abundance of listings and new stock. Stock levels normally peak either side of the Christmas holidays and then slowly dwindle down to the middle of winter before rising again, but this year is a little different. New listings are still coming on the market, just not at the rate they normally do at this time of the year.

Nerang First National monitors the stock levels of all property for sale in the district, irrespective of what agent it is listed with. This provides us significant market intelligence and allows us to analyse the whole market, not just what we see as the highest selling agent in the district. Every week we take a snapshot of how many properties are on the market for sale and how many are marked as under contract.

Nerang

We can see the property “for sale” levels have increased in recent months but not even to the levels experienced post GFC levels of last summer. It seems unlikely that we will ever have more than 200 properties actively for sale in the suburb of Nerang for quite awhile.

Carrara

Properties for sale in Carrara have dropped from the peaks of last summer to winter and we have not seen any Spring and Summer increase at all. The levels are holding fairly stable.

Highland Park

Highland Park has been the only local suburb that appeared to be following the traditional trend with new property listings increasin g from mid winter however the traditional Spring and Summer rush seemed to stop in its tracks in August and since then for sale levels have been on the decline.

All Three Suburbs Combined

When we combine all three primary suburbs in our trade area we see that stock levels have steadily fallen about 20% from their peaks of last summer. Last summers levels were down on previous years as it was immediately after the GFC meltdown which peaked at September 2008. There is seems to be very little indication anything will turn the trend around over the next few months. Under normal market conditions this graph would have the for sale rate increasing over the past couple of months back up to 600 or more properties.

The level of property for sale is effectively the supply side of a the typical supply and demand relationship in real estate. With supply at such low levels relatively and under contract levels remaining steady there is a potential for an imbalance and for demand to start outstripping supply. This in turn could be why many industry commentators are suggesting we might continue to see significant increases in property values over the next few years.

Overview

Real Estate is just like many other industries and 80% of the business is being done by 20% of the agents. In contrast to many in the industry Nerang First National has actually had an amazing 12 months including being selected as the REIQ Queensland Agency of the Year and a Finalist in the REIA Australian Agency of the Year in the medium agency category. Despite the economic downturn that reduced industry turnover by as much as 50 and 60% Nerang First National was able to increase sales numbers, increase revenue and even expand the sales team. 2009 has been a fantastic year!

Traditionally as the market tightens up property owners are far more selective in which agent they choose. This has helped keep our stock levels relatively high even as property for sale levels in the district have dropped. This has resulted in many a real estate agent window filled with “Sold” properties only because they have no new listings to replace them with. Some agents are being forced to display the same property up to 3 or 4 times in their window with different photos.

Real Estate is like many other industries in that you cant make sales without stock. With so many agents out there at the moment who are running very low for available listings to sell over the next few months you can expect to see your letterboxes jam packed with salespeople “begging for listings”.

Headings like “Homes Wanted Urgently”, “Help.. I need more listings” will be familiar catch cries like never before. Some agents will have special flyers printed up like a post card commemorating each sale and inviting you to take advantage of the buyers who missed out. Just like always each agency no matter how small they are is going to claim they are the market leader with in house produced graphs and statistics but logic tells you there can be only one industry leader. As a home owner you need to look through the puffery and find an experienced and skilled team who can get the job done in all market conditions.

If your thinking of selling then the competition for your listing is going to be intense. Regardless of which way property prices move you will always want to achieve the highest possible price at that time so the single most important thing you will need to remember is that the best indicator of future performance is past success.

You can request a free market appraisal online or contact one of the sales team at 07 55960055 to find out for yourself why the real estate industry ranks Nerang First National as one of Australia’s best real estate agents.