Ray White sees 14% year on year sales tally decline in April 2019
With all April's interruptions, Ray White offices recorded $3.2 billion in sales, some 14% down on April 2018.
It was a bigger drop than March when there were $3.75 billion in sales – down 11% on the prior March.
NSW was down from around $960 million in April last year to $806 million this April.
But the bigger drop was in Victoria from around $587 million to $406 million last month.
In NZ, total sales fell around $30 million to $758 million.
Tasmania was up slightly to $13 million.
With $664 million sales, Queensland was off only marginally, just 2% on last year which helped cushion the larger declines in other states, Ray White board director Dan White noted.
"Looking back on April, it was a tough month and we are actually glad it’s now behind us given all the public holidays, school holidays and the federal election campaign getting underway," White said.
White noted the Queensland CEO Tony Warland detecting from far north Queensland to the southern border that "there was a definite sign of a stronger real estate economy".
He said everyone in Townsville had a very positive belief of recovery after the floods, and life is returning to normality there.
"The Central Coast is steady and enjoying the prospects of improvement, while the Sunshine Coast is actually going gangbusters with our Kawana office recording three PBs in a row," White said.
"The whole Sunshine Coast has the lifestyle that the market is looking for while the Gold Coast is enjoying a strong economy in real estate transactions compared to the rest of the country.
"In Brisbane, many of our vendors are putting up high quality properties for high quality returns.
"So while there’s a lot of stock in many other markets, there’s no reports of stock in abundance in Brisbane but days on market are still being tested.
White also noted the group had a solid month across the group with some 1200 auctions conducted, with almost 40,000 people attending auctions across Australia and New Zealand.
Average bidders slipped back to 2.5 people per auction.
In May last year Ray White sold more than $4.1 billion of property across Australasia, which was 6% shy of May 2017.
