Harcourts house sales continue to rise

Real estate group Harcourts says it appears to have recorded a rise of around 35 percent in written nationwide sales in May compared to a year earlier.

Harcourts New Zealand chief executive Bryan Thomson said the indicative May figures reflected the current sound market and the abysmal market a year ago in many locations.

The May figures were a continuation of real estate market trends seen for most of 2009, Mr Thomson said.

The data from Harcourts follows upbeat figures for the Auckland market yesterday from Barfoot & Thompson, which said it had its best month's trading in more than two years in May.

But also yesterday, Westpac economists sounded a note of caution, saying the pick-up in the housing market was unlikely to last. They said prices would start falling again soon following sharp rises in longer term mortgage rates.

Today Harcourts' Mr Thomson said the stand-out part of the country for his group was the area including Waikato, Coromandel Peninsula, Bay of Plenty and parts of the Central Plateau and East Coast.

In that area the volume of sales appeared to have been more than 70 percent up on the same month last year.