Stable Auckland Housing Market Lifts With Spring’s Arrival

Stable Auckland Housing Market Lifts With Spring’s Arrival

The arrival of Spring brought a modest increase of interest in the Auckland housing market, with more homes being listed, the average price edging up and the number of homes sold declining slightly.

“The housing market in October followed a similar pattern to that we have seen for the past four months, and we remain in a relatively stable period in terms of prices and activity,” said Peter Thompson, Managing Director of Barfoot & Thompson.

“The feature that was different was the number of new homes listed for the month. At 1314, this was an increase of 4 percent on that for last month and the highest number of homes listed since March.

“It created greater choice and raised buyer interest.

“Prices in October rose by 1.1 percent on those for September with the average price moving up to $553,765.

“As for much of this year, this average price was affected by the strong interest in the high end of the market, and in October we sold 60 homes with a value in excess of $1 million.

“In the past two years sales of $1 million plus homes in a month have exceeded this number on only three occasions.

“During the month we sold a total of 727 homes, down 1.5 percent on those for September but 29.6 percent higher than in October last year.

“Far more homes are selling this year than last, but for the past three months sales numbers have been marking time, with the movement between the high and low numbers in that period being 31 homes.

“We expect the current stability in prices and sales volume to remain through to the end of the year.”

At the end of October Barfoot & Thompson had a total of 4999 listings, 4.2 percent more than at the end of September, and the highest number since June.

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