Bad news for buyers: Property listings hit record lows

Sunday, 30 June 2019

A $65,000 deposit may well be enough, but then comes the repayments

Average asking prices for Wellington homes broke over $700,000 for the first time in June, data from website Realestate.co.nz shows.

New data from the property sale website found average asking prices in the capital increased 3.8 per cent.

Realestate.co.nz spokeswoman Vanessa Taylor said Wellington's average asking price had been climbing slowly for the last 16 months.

'It's always been a tightly held market. I've got some real estate customers that are saying you just can't get stock for love nor money and the story doesn't seem to have changed,' she said.

Asking prices for homes in several regions reached all-time highs, Realestate.co.nz says.

* Record asking prices for Waikato real estate

* House sellers' confidence is high, and so are the prices they are asking**

The Auckland region saw asking prices creep back up over $900,000 on average, after a three month slump.

'When we started recording data 12 years ago on realestate.co.nz, it showed that the average asking price for a home in the Auckland region in June 2007 was $536,993.

'Ten years later, in June 2017, the average asking price had spiralled exponentially to $916,635 and looked like it was accelerating to the one-million-dollar price tag. This did not happen,' Taylor said.

Along with Wellington asking prices in Canterbury, Manawatu-Wanganui and Southland spiked to record levels.

Realestate.co.nz's Vanessa Taylor says property seekers continue to get squeezed for choice.

The steepest jump in prices was seen in the Manawatu-Wanganui region, which saw a record high asking price of $425,239.

Canterbury's average asking price reached $513,586, and Southland saw asking prices rise to an average of $350,321.

'The Southland region also recorded a modest increase, tipping over the $350,000+ mark for the first time which is significant for our most southern region,' Taylor said.

Average asking prices in Marlborough hit $529,617, an increase of 9.2 per cent from May.

Across the country new listings on the site fell from 12,345 in January 2007 down to 7,545 in June 2019.

Northland, Taranaki, West Coast and Coromandel saw record lows in house listings.

On the West Coast just 34 houses came onto the market, a decline of 30.6 per cent in new listings. In Northland 296 houses were put up for sale, and in the Coromandel 69 dwellings were listed.

'Property seekers continue to get squeezed for choice,' Taylor said.

Homes were staying on the market longer, Taylor said, as new listings were down 12.7 per cent from June 2018, but the total number of properties for sale was up 8.7 per cent with 9085 listings nationally.