Signs of life from sellers

There have been a number of conflicting signals around the state of our economy this month. More positively, inflation is down, house prices are showing modest price recovery, and the market is starting to price in a downward trend in cash rate. However, there have been overseas bank closures and rescues, as well as another large constructor insolvency in Victoria.

Households are unlikely to have an easy time getting a grip on the true outlook, and this is reflected in only modest improvement to the year's overall listings trend.

Having a look at the major cities, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne are still well down on the same month last year. Brisbane, Darwin and Perth saw more moderate losses to listings, while Adelaide and Hobart saw modest increases to listings at this time last year.

So where is the positivity being seen where all, if not most, of the listings numbers are down? It’s because March was close to a record for all time listing numbers and while negative, the comparison tallies this year are less so than last month. As prices hopefully improve, we may see in the coming months the listing trend get closer to the record months of last year.

There lies the major point, that prices improving will encourage more and more vendors to come to market as the return on their current dwelling improves, and the property they potentially relocate to becomes less affordable. We see listings lag prices, should strong price growth continue, it is likely listing numbers will follow.