Auckland housing market shows signs of cooling – study

Auckland’s housing market may be starting to cool off, according to a new set of data.

Research from Barfoot & Thompson has shown that house prices in the North Island’s major city have grown by the lowest rate in five years.

The real estate company revealed that the average house price across all sales in 2017 was $926,632, while the median selling price came in at $843,583. This represents annual increases of 4.5% and 2.7% respectively.

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Peter Thompson, Managing Director of Barfoot & Thompson, said: What did change significantly in 2017 was the number of homes sold, which fell by more than a quarter on the numbers sold in each of the previous three years.

Indeed, the total value of sales for 2017 stood at NZ$8.42bn, a steep decline from 2016’s total of $10.65bn.

Thompson added: “The sense of urgency to buy a property regardless of its asking price has disappeared. It has been replaced by buyers taking a more considered approach.

“Normally when sale numbers fall by such a large percentage, prices retreat from their record high levels. But this has not occurred, and prices have continued to rise modestly. It underlines there is still buyer support at current prices.”

The number of homes sold above $1mn continues to rise, with 37% of all 2017 Auckland house sales being above this threshold. This is a small increase from 35.4% in 2016 and 29.1% in 2015.