The surge in new properties listed for sale is likely to continue until May, putting downward pressure on price growth according to a leading agency.
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of The Agency, Geoff Lucas addressed a webinar announcing the agency’s half year financial results and said he expected more listings to come online based on comparative market analysis (CMA) data.
“What we’ve seen in the month of February has been a significant increase in CMA’s compared to previous years and that data shows that listings are starting to lift,” Mr Lucas said.
“That’s why we believe, there will be a strong increase in the number of homes coming to market in coming weeks and months.”
Mr Lucas said there had been a sharp increase in agents requesting CMA data for listing presentations.
“When a real estate agent comes to your home to talk about a potential listing, the first thing they do is request comparative market analysis data from RP Data (CoreLogic),” he said.
“They do this to demonstrate the value they’ve come up with for your home.
“The more of these we see being consumed, the more visits agents are having to living rooms to discuss the sale of their property.
“That invariably links to future sales.”
Mr Lucas said he expected the surge of listings and transactions was likely to continue until the Federal Election.
“Transactions are likely to rise with a near term influx of listings,” he said.
“We think this is going to be a tailing off over the Easter period and the election period later in May.
“We then see this building again through winter and into the traditional spring selling season.
“Overall for the calendar year, we expect volumes in 2022, to approximate the annual volumes we saw in 2021.”
After record growth in house prices across Australia over the past 12 months, Mr Lucas tipped more moderate growth over the next year as increased listing volumes put downward pressure on prices.
“Our forecasts are broadly in line with most of the banks with a far more subdued rate of increase this year than last and we believe that will somewhere in the vicinity of 4-6 per cent for the 2022 calendar year,” he said.
