Auckland house prices at fresh high in February

Auckland house prices reached a record high in February, despite sales numbers dropping to their lowest in six years, the city's largest realtor says.

The average sale price rose 3.4 percent to $944,574 in February from January, Barfoot & Thompson said in a statement. That a 2.6 percent gain on the average for the previous three months, and a 14.9 percent increase from February 2016. Monthly sales volumes fell 11.6 percent to 529 from January and were down 20.3 percent from February last year.

On Wednesday, state-owned valuer Quotable Value reported the average value of a New Zealand home rose 13.5 percent to $631,349 in February from a year earlier. That growth has been centred in Auckland in recent years as the country's largest city faces a shortage of housing to meet a growing population, though lending curbs have helped slow growth, with values shrinking 0.7 percent over the past three months to $1.04 million, an annual gain of 12.8 percent. The housing market is being buoyed by record migration and low interest rates, even as the central bank tightens lending restrictions in attempts to reduce the risk to financial stability.

Barfoot & Thompson director Kiri Barfoot said prices at the top end of the Auckland market were not under downward pressure, with competition for properties near $1 million strong.

"The number of new listings for February at 2295 was our highest ever in a February (month) and combined with the low number of sales in the month saw available listings at month end at 4546. The last time we had more listings on our books than this was in 2012. Based on buyer interest this situation may be short-lived," Ms Barfoot said. "At present, the market has divided around the $750,000 mark. Above this point, sales numbers and prices remain consistent. Below it uncertainty has developed as to whether asking prices represent value for money, and sales numbers have fallen."

The latest Barfoot data shows 34 percent of all the properties the realtor sold in February went for more than $1 million. Sales under $750,000 were down by a third on 2016 and were less than half of those in 2015.

(BusinessDesk)