Harcourts New Zealand’s initial unaudited figures for August indicate that both the volume of property sales and price levels remained “solid” last month, with a record number of unique visitors to the Harcourts website in August suggesting spring will be busy.

Harcourts New Zealand CEO Bryan Thomson says the nationwide group’s initial unaudited figures for August are at similar levels to July and well ahead of the same month last year, with an average of 38% more written sales being completed last month than in August 2008.

“The highlights were our Northern region, encompassing the area from Pukekohe north, which has had a 70% increase on last August in terms of the volume of written sales, our Central region which the indicative figures show was 56% up on August 2008 and our Christchurch region which was 48% up on the same month last year.”

Mr Thomson says according to Harcourts indicative unaudited August figures the “solid” volume of activity last month was similar to that reported for July 2009. 

“The exception is our Northern region where written sales numbers have increased by 12%, thanks to a combination of the more active market in our largest city and, we believe, strong marketshare growth for our team in Auckland.”

In terms of prices Mr Thomson says Harcourts indicative average written sales figures for August in some regions again show the impact of the slower rural market however according to anecdotal feedback from around New Zealand’s largest real estate group residential prices are holding firm with the high level of demand seeing some excellent prices being achieved around the country.

Mr Thomson says that achieving record numbers of unique visitors to Harcourts New Zealand website for two months in a row is a sign of how much interest in New Zealand real estate there is currently.

“In July we set a new record to date but then in August we’ve topped that – according to the latest statistics from Nielsen Online Market Intelligence receiving 185,687 unique visitors in the month, which is a significant increase on last year.

“As we said last month this level of activity reflects the returning confidence in the market and suggests that there could be a lot of sales activity in spring.”  

Harcourts New Zealand website, www.harcourts.co.nz, is consistently the most visited real estate company website in New Zealand, receiving over 40% more unique visitors than the next most popular real estate brand website according to the latest statistics.

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