Asking prices reach new record: Website

Auckland asking prices hit a new record in June, listings website Realestate.co.nz reports.

Friday, July 11th 2014, 12:00AM

by The Landlord

The average asking price for the city in June was $732,240, almost 7% up on the month before and up from the previous record of $685,426 in April.

That pushed the national average asking price up to a new record in June, of $490,550.

All but four of the country’s 19 regions recorded higher average asking prices compared to the same month last year.

Wellington recorded an average asking price of $454,358, up very slightly from the month before. The average asking price in Canterbury was $443,730, compared to the record of $449,000 set in January.

Northland had the biggest month-on-month increase in asking price, up 17.2% to $474,738.

The four regions that reported asking price falls were Gisborne, Hawkes Bay, Manawatu/Wanganui, Marlborough and Otago. Marlborough had the biggest fall, down more than 22% from May to $368,581.

“The high asking prices in Auckland in particular suggest that home sellers are confident they will get their price,” said the website’s marketing manager, Paul McKenzie. “A factor in this may be the low overall supply of homes on the market.”

The number of homes newly listed for sale was the lowest on record for June of any year.

The 8524 new listings is 20% less than the month before, and 6.1% less than June 2013. Only Canterbury, Wellington, Northland, and Coromandel experienced an increase in listings from the same time last year, while four regions recorded their lowest number of monthly new listings on record: Bay of Plenty, Central North Island, Gisborne, and Central Lakes.

“The low number of new listings brought the overall number of homes on the New Zealand market down to just 38,693, one of the six lowest monthly totals we’ve seen,” McKenzie said.

“However, buyer interest is still very much in evidence. We get more than 45,000 potential home buyers visiting the realestate.co.nz website every day. These are all people specifically looking at properties for sale or rent.”

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