It is currently too early to tell whether this is a one off trend, or will continue for the remainder of the spring selling season. Encouragingly, Ray White listing authorities remained elevated in September suggesting that we are still in for market strength over coming months.
New listings volume is well up on last year with 2022 being a particularly slow year for market activity. Excluding the pandemic years, spring is the peak selling season. For a variety of reasons it appears that it started earlier this year. It may have been partly due to a higher number of investors deciding to sell given the stress of high interest rates, or alternatively more vendors buoyed by improving market conditions.
Next month we will get a clearer picture of what is happening in the market. It is possible that now we are close to (or at) peak interest rates and price growth continues to be strong that more vendors will come to market.
Nearly all major cities saw listings decline from August, with the exception of Canberra. On a year-on-year basis however, the trend is far more positive. Australian listings are up 3.1 per cent. Sydney is leading the charge with total listings up almost 26 per cent. More negatively Brisbane and Darwin are still well below 2022 trends.
While we have seen an increase in new listings in capital cities, the number continues to fall in regional Australia. Like Brisbane, regional Queensland also saw a decline suggesting that the market remains tightly held. The areas with the biggest increases were regional NSW and regional Victoria.
Ray White listing authorities (the point at which a vendor has signed to Ray White but the listing is not yet advertised) provide the best indicator as to the outlook for listings. Overall, we continue to see listing authorities remain far higher than the last two years. While this could be due to higher market share for Ray White, it could also suggest that the September decline in new listings experienced across the market was a once off.
