December 2024 Market Update

The Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) has released the December 2024 figures. To better understand the state of the market and where it might be heading, I created some simple graphs. Personally, I find it much easier to scan a graph to see not just how the numbers have changed since last month but also to identify any longer-term trends. It’s far more helpful for me than trying to make sense of numbers scribbled on a piece of paper. Hopefully, these visuals will be useful to you too.

The number of Sales depicted below does show a drop from last month which of course can be expected December is usually a quieter month obviously because of Christmas but also from the 24th to usually around the 14th of January the lawyers are closed so homes cannot settle in that time, often has a bigger effect in January we will have to wait to see if that is the case this time. A huge positive however in December 22, we saw only 47 sales and 78 for December 24, that is a massive increase with for further improvements.

The graph below shows which price ranges the above December 24, sales came from.

The median sale price does bounce about month to month that is normal, it does show a nice jump to finish of the year with December having a $70k increase for the month before, but overall, quite static over the last couple of years with no clear improvement, hopefully that will change shorty with interest rates continuing to fall.

How long is it taking to sell in Rotorua? well, the median time to sell in Dec 24, in Rotorua was 61 up from 47 last month but as you may have seen in the past updates that figure bounces about on a monthly basis with little obvious reason but overall, the trend is downward.