House Prices Gain Momentum And Auckland Back In The Million Dollar Club

New Zealand’s housing market appears to be thawing, with October seeing both warming temperatures and house prices, according to new data from Trade Me Property.

The national average asking price for a property in October was $848,900, up 3.1 per cent from September and the strongest month-on-month growth in close to three years. Year-on-year prices remain down -1.4 per cent.

“It’s positive to see property prices continue to trend up across much of the country off the back of recent changes to the OCR and as we head into summer when we would typically expect to see some momentum,” says Trade Me Property Customer Director Gavin Lloyd.

“These latest figures should give those selling a property or looking to list their home a little extra confidence.”

Lloyd says both supply and demand were up around nine per cent month-on-month.

“We saw supply and demand start to taper off over the winter months but bounce back as we moved into spring. Compared to last year both remain strong with supply up +26 per cent on October 2023 and demand up +20 per cent.

Average asking prices in Auckland return to seven figures in October

Auckland saw a comeback in October with an average asking price of $1,038,550, up 4.2 per cent or more than $42,000.

This is a significant increase since August when the average asking price dropped below one million dollars for the first time in four years.

Auckland City and North Shore City are partly responsible for the month-on-month growth, up 7.8 per cent to $1,217,300 and 5.1 per cent to $1,235,300 respectively.

“We’ve now had two straight months of increasing prices for Tāmaki Makaurau which will be reassuring to those selling, after five consecutive months of declining prices for the region,” says Mr Lloyd.

Properties faster to sell

With demand heating up across much of the motu, properties are now selling quicker than in previous months. The median time for a property to be listed on site sits at 59, down from 70 in September and just three days longer than October 2023.

"Homes selling quicker is a good sign for our property market, particularly when it coincides with increasing demand as we have seen over the past four months,” says Lloyd.

Fourteen regions show growth, with Gisborne the exception

All but one of the 15 regions Trade Me Property monitors showed growth in the average asking price between September and October.

Excluding Auckland, the top three regions with the biggest increases across the month include the West Coast up +6.3 per cent, Southland up +4.6 per cent and Northland up +3.1 per cent.

Gisborne was the only region where the average asking price fell month-on-month, down -1.8 per cent to $603,650. The decline in October marks the fifth consecutive month of falling prices for Tairāwhiti.

About the Trade Me Property Price Index:

The Trade Me Property Price Index measures trends in the expectations of selling prices for residential property listings added to Trade Me Property by real estate agents and private sellers over the past three months.

It provides buyers, sellers and realtors with insights into ‘for sale’ price trends by property type and property size.

The Index is produced from data on properties listed on Trade Me Property in the three months leading up to the last day of each period. Each period’s value is a truncated mean of the complete three months’ worth of listings. This is to better reflect trends in property prices rather than month-to-month fluctuations in housing stock.

The Index uses an “80 per cent truncated mean” of the expected sale price to calculate the average asking price. This excludes the upper and lower 10 per cent of listings by price, and averages the expected sale prices of the remaining properties.

It provides an insight into ‘for sale’ price trends by type and size of property. Other reports aggregate property price data across these various properties.

Some of the numbers in this release have been rounded

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