NZ Property Report: April 2021

Lockdown anniversary: The property market a year on

12-month data shows rising asking prices; not enough houses to meet demand

Latest figures from realestate.co.nz illustrate how New Zealand’s property market has fared since our first Covid-19 lockdown just over a year ago – and it’s clear our Kiwi love affair with property is still going strong.

“Looking back over the last year we can see prices steadily increasing each month, to the point where the national average asking price is now more than $830,000,” says Vanessa Taylor, spokesperson for realestate.co.nz.

“I don’t think rising prices will come as news to anyone, but what’s interesting is how quickly and strongly the market bounced back after lockdown in April last year.”

More than 1.24 million users were recorded on realestate.co.nz in May 2020, suggesting Kiwis didn’t waste any time getting back into the property market after level 4 restrictions lifted.

“We all spent a lot of time at home during lockdown and I think this prompted a lot of people to reassess their property needs,” says Vanessa.

Since last May, the number of people searching for property on the site has remained consistently high, peaking in March 2021 with 1.36 million users.

“More people searched for property in 2020 than any other year since 2016, and we’re tracking to eclipse that in 2021,” says Vanessa.

Interestingly, overseas interest has remained high throughout the last 12 months with on average 21.4% of users on realestate.co.nz searching from outside New Zealand.

“We know that a lot of Kiwis have returned home from overseas during this time, but it could also be that our relative success with Covid-19 has made New Zealand even more attractive for international buyers,” she says.

However, the high demand hasn’t been matched by the number of properties available for sale: inventory has remained consistently low over the last year, despite increases in the number of new listings coming onto the market.

“Stock shortages have posed real challenges for buyers and we can see how much pressure this has put on prices,” says Vanessa.

9,145 properties were listed for sale nationwide during the month of April 2021 – 2,177 fewer than March.

“As we head into winter, we usually start to see less activity in the property market. In a year that’s been anything but normal, it will be interesting to see whether this trend continues,” she says.

National asking price edges towards $840k in April; record prices in four regions

Real-time data from realestate.co.nz shows the average asking price for Kiwi properties was $839,035 in April, up slightly from $835,844 in March.

“It’s astonishing to think that during the same period last year there were no physical open homes or property viewings. The housing market has performed in a way that few people would have expected when Covid-19 restrictions were first announced,” says Vanessa.

Four North Island regions hit all-time asking price highs in April: Northland, Taranaki, Wellington and Manawatu/Whanganui all reached peak asking prices since records began 14 years ago.

Northland reached a record high for the fourth consecutive month, with a home in the region now asking $751,670 on average.

Prices continue to climb in the capital, with Wellington reaching a record average asking price of $887,837 – up 4.3% from $850,912 in March.

Taranaki and Manawatu/Whanganui also reached peak prices since records began 14 years ago, with average asking prices of $ $553,071 and $ $604,196 respectively.

Auckland remains New Zealand’s most expensive region, with an average asking price of $1,099,154 last month.
 

ENDS

 

For media enquiries, please contact:

Trish Fitzsimons | 021 022 96927 | trish@realestate.co.nz

 

About realestate.co.nz

Established before Google, in 1996, realestate.co.nz is New Zealand’s longest-standing property site. With residential, lifestyle, rural and commercial property listings available, realestate.co.nz is the place where serious buyers look for property. Dedicated to property, realestate.co.nz has no private sales and has search functionality that’s second to none to get you to your perfect property faster.

Glossary of terms:

As the only provider of real estate data in real-time, realestate.co.nz offers valuable property market information not available from other sources.

• Average asking price is not a valuation. It is an indication of current market sentiment. Statistically, asking prices tend to correlate closely with the sales prices recorded in future months when those properties are sold. As it looks at different data, average asking prices may differ from recorded sales data released at the same time.
• Inventory is a measure of how long it would take, theoretically, to sell the current stock at current average rates of sale if no new properties were to be listed for sale. It provides a measure of the rate of turnover in the market.
• New listings are a record of all the new listings on realestate.co.nz for the relevant calendar month. As realestate.co.nz reflects 97% of all properties listed through registered estate agents in New Zealand, this gives a representative view of the New Zealand property market.
• Demand: the increase or decrease in the number of views per listing in that region, taken over a rolling three-month time frame, compared to the same three-month time frame the previous year – including the current month.
• Seasonal adjustment is a method realestate.co.nz uses to better represent the core underlying trend of the property market in New Zealand. This is done using methodology from the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research.
• Truncated mean is the method realestate.co.nz uses to provide statistically relevant asking prices. The top and bottom 10% of listings in each area are removed before the average is calculated, to prevent exceptional listings from providing false impressions.