Healthy progress in Chch property market

Press, 10 October 1984, Page 12

Healthy progress in Chch property market

No wild fluctuations in fortune have struck the Christchurch property market in recent months, despite the snap election and uncertainties in the mortgage market. Real estate and building industry spokespeople report a steady rate of growth over all, although the weeks following the election saw a slight downturn in trade. The president of the Canterbury and Westland branch of the Real Estate Institute, Mr Nobby Grant; says that all the real estate firms he had been in touch with recently reported a “healthy and steady” rate of sales.

“In August things came down a bit,” he says, “but in

these recent weeks sales have been going really well. “In fact, there has been a minor upsurge in sales. It’s not booming, but the sales are going through and we are more than happy.” Mr Grant points out that contrary to popular opinion the real estate business is not a boom and bust industry, but “a remarkably steady industry.” Mr Grant cites sales figures for the Multiple Listing Bureau. In the month of July the bureau listed 246 sales and in August 227 sales were recorded. No figures are available for September, at the time of writing, but Mr Grant quoted sales of 17 and 19 houses around the city on

two consecutive days in late September as showing the healthy state of trading for the bureau.

It is obvious that people are still finding the mortgage money to finance the purchase of a house, Mr Grant says, despite the recent wholesale increase in mortgage interest rates. Builders in the city are facing a similarly optimistic spring season, according to the president of the Canterbury Master Builders’ Association, Mr Bill Harrison.

Mr Harrison says that the recent announcement of the first signs of economic growth in New Zealand in a decade, was very evident in Christchurch.

In Residence

Carole Van Grondelle

PROPERTY REPORTER

For the last 18 months, building permits figures in the city have steadily increased. He says this is not spectacular, but it is an increase.

“We have had a pretty disturbing few months, what with the snap election — and we’re still awaiting the Budget. But there is a general air of confidence in the industry,” he reports.

Bill Harrison visited the large Auckland Home Show

recently. He was impressed with the level of commitment that a number of building firms were making in the housing sector, confident of a profitable return. Bill Harrison also recently had cause to take the national president of the Master Builders’ Federation, Mr Ivan Linnell, from Hastings, on a brief tour of Christchurch.

The level of building activity in the city impressed

Mr Linnell considerably, according to Mr Harrison. Their tour included the proposed site for the new hotel, in Victoria Street, opposite the Town Hall, sites for the new M.E.D. and Ministry of Works buildings, Cranmer Courts, the demolition and site clearance of the old wing of Christchurch Hospital, Bishopspark and the Maryville housing complex on the corner of Salisbury and Manchester Streets.

“Mr Linnell saw enough of the projects that we’re currently undertaking, both in housing and in commercial work, to have quite a different impression of Christchurch than he arrived with,” Mr Harrison said.

“He had the impression of the South Island that it was very depressed, but he said that things looked pretty good compared with his own area of Napier-Hastings.”

Mr Harrison concedes the building situation in such places as Ashburton and Timaru is not so rosy.

The joint managing director of one of the largest house building firms in Christchurch, Mr Tony Merritt, of Merritt Homes, is more cautious. His view is that the sale of new houses “had been better,” and that there is “no great volume of houses going through.”

! He maintains that inflation is catching up rapidly on house prices, and that

many of the people now able to finance a new house will be unable to do so in just a few months time. “It’s getting a lot more difficult for low-income and middle-income people to be able to finance themselves into an affordable housing package,” Mr Merritt believes. ' “There’s a restraint on how many dollars you can borrow, and unfortunately the house prices are moving :up.” He considers the market is therefore cautious, but generally optimistic. Merritt Homes sold 56 new houses in the last two ’months, and the firm is still building a new house every working day.