What Happened to the Markets in December 2011?

Ray White in December nudged ahead of December 2010. People often get surprised when big numbers are achieved in the December month due to the gaps in number of working days. But there is often a rush, which happened again last year, to successfully complete the negotiations on so many of the properties that were part of our Spring marketing campaign. Nothing exemplifies this better than our Double Bay office result which exceeded $50m in unconditional sales – remarkable how the prospect of year end brings sales to fruition.

Whatever. More proof that the recent reduction in interest rates is continuing to lift activity, giving confidence to purchasers that a continuing fear of more rate rises will not eventuate. Thus our December result at $2.1b when adjusted to a sales-per-working-day comes out to be even better than our excellent November result.

More promising omens for 2012.

The brightest market spot? New Zealand was up 40 per cent. West Australia had a 26 per cent lift on December 2010. Could it be that the Perth market has begun following its eastern state cousins? These increases are big numbers.

Our new Hotels division sold a portfolio of hotels to Woolworths Ltd for $320m. Our research shows that this was the major transaction by a real estate group for 2011 – a tremendous achievement to Andrew Jolliffe and Tony Bargwanna who head up this new business.

Our Rural results were the best for 12 months.

Confidence supporting the acquisition of quality commercial property continues and resulted in a strong December for our specialist network.

Our Loan Market result just missed $600m in approved loans, making it the second best month on record. More proof in the emerging underlying confidence within our communities.

taken from raywhite.net