Auckland House Prices Increasing At Stubbornly High Rate

The onset of winter and the new regulations aimed at making home buying less attractive to investors did not dampen the price, or the number of Auckland houses sold in June.

“Normally in June sales numbers start to edge lower, but this year we sold 1243 homes, up 3.8 percent on those for the previous month, and both the average and median prices paid were higher than those for May,” said Peter Thompson, Managing Director of Barfoot & Thompson.

“Even though our new listings for the month at 1485 were solid, at month end our total listings at 2864 were the lowest at a month end for 5 years.

“Demand and competition for homes has never been higher and the number of homes we had for sale at the end of the month was down by a quarter on the number available at the same time last year.

“The average price paid was $1,143,328, up 2.6 percent on that for May, and the median price at $1,109,000 was up 3.4 percent.

“The rate at which prices are increasing did ease slightly in June but the rate remains stubbornly high.

“Our June-on-June median price increase now stands at 21.9 percent. The Real Estate Institute’s Price Index for May-to-May for Auckland was an increase of 26.3 percent.

“Demand for housing, low levels of supply and record low mortgage interest rates are continuing to prove a stronger counterbalance to the new regulations looking to pull back the rate of price increases.

“Demand for high end housing continues unabated, and during the month we sold 120 homes for more than $2 million. The only month last year when we sold more $2 million homes than this was in December.

“Throughout last year, our monthly average for the number of homes that sold for more than $2 million was 61.

“During June we sold 170 homes for less than $750,000, which represented 13.8 percent of our total sales for the month.

“What properties we had to sell in the rural and lifestyle markets attracted strong buyer interest, and further sales are being held back by a lack of listings.

“There are more buyers than vendors in the rural and lifestyles markets currently.

“Of particular interest is bare land that is zoned for residential or has future potential for rezoning.”

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