Housing: national and Auckland asking prices hit new records

The average asking price of homes for sale in New Zealand during February was $511,421 according to the latest monthly data from Realestate.co.nz, marking the first time that sellers’ expectations have pushed the asking price above the half million dollar threshold.

In addition, the average asking price in Auckland continued to break records for the second consecutive month, reaching a new high of $764,424, a 1.9% increase on the $750,023 benchmark set in January.

A year ago, the average asking price in Auckland was at a high of $677,370, indicating that asking prices across the city have grown by an average of 13%, or $87,000, over the past 12 months.  

The new national high in average asking price of $511,421 represents an increase of 2.6% on the previous record set in January of $498,471. In addition to Auckland, Taranaki also experienced a new high in average asking price of $369,791, breaking the previous record of $344,910 set in December 2013.

In terms of actual sales, the latest Real Estate Institute data says he number of sales rose 2.6% in January from a year earlier to 4841, although they dropped about 32% from December, reflecting the typical summer slowdown. The median price was $426,000, up $24,000 from January last year but down by $24,000 from December.

In Auckland, the volume of sales rose to 1764 from 1737 in January last year. The median price of $660,000 was up from $569,000 a year earlier and down from $678,000 in December. In the past 12 months, the median price in Auckland has jumped 16%, while for the rest of the country the gain was just 1.8%.

“Key regions in New Zealand, such as Canterbury and Auckland, continue to show robust growth in average asking price, as well as a healthy number of new listings," Realestate.co.nz director Bryan Thomson says.

The number of new listings of homes for sale across New Zealand in February was 12,008, an increase of 26% over January, and marginally below the number in February last year of 12,167.
While new listings in Auckland were slightly up, by 1.1%, on the same time last year, Canterbury and Waikato both experienced significant jumps in new listings of 14.9% and 8.6% respectively over February 2014. New listings in Wellington during February 2015 fell by 9.7% from the same month last year.

The national average in overall inventory* of available housing stock for sale rose slightly to 24.4 weeks in February, marginally above the record low level set in January of 21.4 weeks. “The long-term national average is 36 weeks of stock, which indicates that in some parts of the country with low inventory levels, such as Central Otago, Canterbury, Wellington, and Auckland, the property markets continue to favour sellers. These regions are driving the national average downward. However, there are other regions which are finely balanced, while others favour buyers, such as Manawatu, Taranaki, Gisborne, Southland and West Coast,” Mr Thomson says.

* Inventory is expressed as a theoretical measure of the number of weeks it would take to sell all unsold housing stock on the market at a given date, which includes all active listings of homes for sale no matter when they were first listed.