The latest(August) Barefoot sales statistics are now available.  In the news release we are told that sales have fallen sharply since July while prices have risen.  However, if we take into consideration what we discussed last time, we will remember that the sale of an apartment block both biased down prices and increased sales in July.  If anything – the current figures tell us that Auckland remains flat, but they don’t give us much of a read on the rest of the country.

Other discussions of general real estate statistics are on the Rates Blog, and the Real estate site.

Mike Pero also indicate that they believe house sales are going to begin rising.  If this does happen I would also recommend that we keep two other things in mind:

1. House sales are at a incredibly low base – so any lift does not imply to us that the market is truly “back to normal”.
2. With rents currently falling, the yield on property is terrible – so any significant increase in sales will HAVE to come from further substantial easing in prices.  In real quality adjusted terms we are starting to see this happen.

Following the improvement in business confidence, New Zealand has now experienced a rebound in consumer confidence:

Source (Roy Morgan)

Now consumer confidence is still at low levels compared to recent history – however, it is now in net “optimistic” territory, a sure sign that consumers are becoming more willing to open their wallets.

Furthermore, the magnitude of the decline in consumer confidence over the June quarter was what first pointed to the sharp decline in household economic activity over this period. The rebound in confidence since the end of July (the early August survey) has been similarly impressive – indicating that there could well have been a sharp increase in household economic activity over the September quarter, relative to June.

However, there is one provision that we have to place on this improving outlook:

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