Burbs Housing Market Update

In my Sub Million Dollar Houses blog I included an update of the local market using information gleaned from the Courier Mail's Property Section and the website, www.realestate.com.au. This was sales data for the week April 2nd to Apr 8th.

I've repeated the exercise this week -- Apr 9th to 15th:

The good news is that there appears (optically, at least) to have been more sales in this past week i.e. the sales data column is longer, so I'm willing to accept that the total number of sales was higher (not very scientific and it may not actually be true but let's look on the brightside). The more pertinent data came in as follows (this includes houses and units only):

Total published property sales for the Western Burbs, plus surrounding areas: 4 (prior week, 3)

Total published property sales for the Western Burbs only: 2 (prior week, zero)

Total property sales for the Western Burbs, plus surrounding areas over $500k: 2 (prior week, 3)

Total published property sales for All Brisbane over $500k: 30 (prior week, 33)

Total published property sales for All Brisbane over $1m: 1 (prior week,3)

As I discussed in a previous blog, some simple research lead me to conclude that there are at least 1,000 properties across the Brisbane metropolitan area for sale in the $1m+ category, and the actual number is likely to be north of 1,250. With one published sale over $1m this week, you can see that there is quite an overhang (to put it mildly). I'll be mightily impressed if that clears without any serious impairment to the overall level of prices. In truth, we haven't really seen a clear move lower in prices across the board -- this is still some way off. We're in a classic seller standoff, where there's preference to hold out for the right price or simply withdraw properties from the market altogether, but the pressure on prices is building all the time and eventually they'll crack, leading to many sellers taking to a more 'proactive stance'. Then it becomes a race to the bottom, while buyers stay on the sidelines to observe. Bear in mind that all those properties that have been withdrawn for now are effectively part of the overall supply number, because they'll be back just as soon as a) the market firms up or b) the markeet cracks.