Highest First-Quarter Fall in 15 Years For Auckland Property Market.
Well, the media talk in late March and early April has all been about how Auckland property market house prices are continuing to ‘plunge’, and in fact March did see the highest first-quarter fall in more than 15 years: Auckland (-5.2%), Hamilton (-5.2%), and Wellington (-4.8%) led the decline.
What the media is telling us is that buyers are scared to make a decision; they are worried about interest rates, flood plains, and the uncertainty of this year’s election. Investors in particular are staying clear of the market at the moment.
But despite what the media is telling us, our open homes have been busy.
We recently auctioned a property in Shamrock Park (just behind Dannemora).
We had 128 groups through three weekends of open homes and had 23 registered bidders on auction day. It sold for over $2m above its CV of $2.6m.
Our next two auctions, one in Broadway Park, Newmarket, and the other in Remuera, both sold under the hammer with multiple bidders.
And some more good news on the housing market:
Corelogic’s head of research, Nick Goodall, is predicting the end of falling prices in New Zealand as soon as June this year.
He is basing this on the upturn in property prices in Australia and says that we will follow suit, perhaps just three months after them.
CoreLogic Australia’s home value index for March posted the first month-on-month rise since April 2022, with prices up .6% and values were higher across the four largest capital cities in Australia and other areas, led by a 1.4% gain in Sydney.
Interestingly, home values across Australia are 15% higher than in March 2020, while NZ home values are sitting around 28% higher.
With such a huge increase in NZ prices, it’s not surprising that we have experienced a bigger fall than Australia.
OneRoof/Valocity research has shown that the rate of decline in Canterbury, the country’s second-biggest housing market, has slowed considerably in the last three months, with the region’s average property value down just 0.3% quarter-on-quarter.
So if you are buying, or selling, there is hope!
We are fairly confident that the market will be “steady as she goes” for the next year or so and we doubt there will be any more dramatic price drops in the foreseeable future.
Lisa and Steve Stone
Elite Agents for Ray White