market report - lifestyle

The market for lifestyle blocks showed an increase in activity from the middle to late 2009.  Early 2010 has seen sale volumes remaining rather fickle and the upper price bracket especially remains difficult to sell.

Despite this increase in sales activity, we do not believe that there has been any increase in values and generally speaking we believe that values have continued to soften.  Values appear to have softened most in the upper price bracket more so than the middle and lower price brackets.

It appears that the increase in sales activity has been a result of people making a decision to act and buy and sell for their own reasons rather than sitting and waiting as was the case in much of 2008 and the very early stages of 2009 due to the negative media regarding real estate.  When people are buying and selling in the same market, a downturn in values as we have recently experienced is of little consequence. 

Financial pressure on some property owners is resulting in an increase in mortgagee sales and people trying to sell of their own accord prior to financiers forcing the issue as occurs under a mortgagee sale scenario.

A notable observation in recent times has been the reduction in values for vacant blocks of land, particularly smaller rural/residential sized titles.  This has been along a similar fashion to the residential vacant section market which is showing decreases in value because of the large number of vacant sections in the marketplace together with the comparative attractiveness of buying an existing dwelling because of the reductions in value recently. 

As usual, demand for properties with good views, well located blocks and those with flatter contours are experiencing the strongest demand.