July property update: Four provinces hit all-time price highs

You can’t make the right property decisions if you don’t know the market. To help you get up to speed fast, we’ve covered the major movements in NZ property during July.

Property markets in regional NZ are thriving with Taranaki, Otago, Southland and Hawke’s Bay taking the lead. This strong performance, along with Auckland’s second month of price growth in a row, has driven an increase of the national average house price, and another positive month for the NZ market. 

New listings are down nationwide

The amount of new listings on realestate.co.nz in July 2019 were lower than during the same period in 2018 in most major centres. That includes:

• Auckland: 2,452 new listings, down by 2.5%.
• Waikato: 595 new listings, down by 9.2%.
• Otago: 216 new listings, down by 5.7%.
• Southland: 159 new listings, down by 7.6%.
• Wellington: 482 new listings, down by 0.6%.
• Taranaki: 151 new listings, down by 23%.

These regions drove a decrease in the number of new listings nationally, which were down by 2.8 per cent against the same time last year. 

All-time asking price highs in the provinces

All of the cities listed above also saw average asking prices increases, which indicates that limited supply could be the cause of price growth across the board. 

These four provincial regions performed particularly well over July, recording record-high average house prices:

• Otago: Demand for property appears to be far outstripping demand in the Otago region, where total stock was down by 17.3 per cent compared to July 2018. This may have been a factor in the average price increase of 11.3% over the last year and makes the region a must-watch for investors. 

• Taranaki: The market in Taranaki saw a limited number of new listings in July 2019, which could be contributing to a supply and demand imbalance. This no doubt drove the region to an all-time asking price high of $474,424 after an increase of 11.6% during the last 12 months. 

• Southland: The supply of property in Southland is not meeting demand - in fact, total listings hit an all-time low in July at just 339. Again, this may be the reason why the average asking price in Southland has hit all-time highs four out of the last six months. 

• Hawkes Bay: In July Hawke’s Bay had an all-time low number of new property listings, and total property listings, paired with an all-time high asking price of $579,647. This indicates that this is a very tight market and future growth is likely. 
  
  

Apart from the impressive growth of these four regions, the big story for July was Auckland’s continued resurgence. Prices in our biggest city increased by 1.5%, to just under $930,000. This is a good sign for homeowners and investors in Auckland, as well as the markets nearby the supercity such as Hamilton and Whangarei, which tend to grow when Auckland grows.

Are you thinking about buying a new home or selling your property soon? For more in-depth advice and the help of a local expert - get in touch with the team at your nearest Professionals Real Estate office today.