As part of a general clean up of my website, I made some changes to the pages that hold my Adelaide Advertiser Real Estate section page count analysis.
I thought I would add updates to my blog rather than having them on a separate webpage.
Here is some background.
December 2nd, 2001
After some interesting comments from a friend of mine, I decided to begin charting the number of pages in the Adelaide Advertiser newspaper Real Estate liftout each saturday.We believe that the number of pages in the liftout can be taken as an indicator of the state of the property market in Adelaide. More pages in the liftout generally means more properties being advertised.
Now what these figures actually mean does depend on a few different things, and by no means should be taken as a complete indicator of the property market. It is merely one more bit of information that may help to shed some light on what is happening in the marketplace.
My analysis of the figures is that an increase in the page count (which we take to mean an increase in the number of properties being advertised for sale) means one of two things (and perhaps even both).
– There are more people listing their properties. After a period of strong sales growth and increasing property values, many people take this as a perfect opportunity to sell their property… especially when Mrs. Bloggs from next door got such a good price for their home, and ours is so much nicer than theirs.
– The properties that are on the market are not selling, or at least not selling quite as quickly as they have before. Now there would be many factors that affect this result, in particular the Christmas holiday season tends to see people not looking at property quite so much, and hence sales tend to slow a little.
But it could also indicate the turning point in a property boom. Low stock levels and low interest rates combining to increase demand and hence values. After a while, people start to realise that their property is worth considerably more than it was 12 months ago, and perhaps decide to list it for sale.
Towards the end of the boom, once sales start to slow down, there are still people caught up in the sales cycle and property boom, and eagerly list their property for sale. But they don’t sell as quickly as anticipated, or a vendors unrealistic expectations cause properties to be passed in at auction.
Now as I’ve said, this is a rather crude and simple analysis of these numbers and there are many other factors which I have not taken into account with these figures.
Please note that none of the comments or data on these pages constitute financial advice. I am merely sharing some interesting information and speculating on what it may mean.
December 9th, 2001
I have started to collect details of the rental adverts from the Saturday Advertiser as well. I do this by counting the the number of columns in both the “Units and Townhouses” and the “Houses” for rent sections.
December 16th, 2001
I have added a new chart showing the three sets of figures normalised. The way I have done this is to take the 6 week moving averages and then adjust the figures so that the minimum value of the averages is taken as ‘0’ and the maximum value of the averages is taken as ‘1’ (or 100%). This allows us to compare the flow of the averages between the minimum and maximum values and then map the three sets of values (Sales, Rental Houses, and Rental Units) on the same chart.
June 8th, 2002
I have updated the charts with the last 6 months worth of data.
January 16th, 2003
I have updated the charts with the last 6 months worth of data.
I’ll get around to updating the charts with the latest data soon – I promise !
Leave a Reply