In July last year, the average number of views per Trade Me listing across all New Zealand was 570 - about the same as Tauranga. Now the city was smashing the national average by more than 550 views per listing.
Another telling statistic of Auckland's growing influence on the market was an analysis of the hits on Tauranga properties listed on realestate.co.nz. Thirty-nine per cent of hits were from Auckland - nearly treble a year earlier and well ahead of the 21 per cent of views by Bay of Plenty residents.
Skyrocketing interest in New Zealand's premier lifestyle city was also translating into up to 50 per cent of people attending Tauranga open homes coming from Auckland. Mr Stanway said Aucklanders were not just looking at properties online. "They are hopping in their cars and coming down here in the weekend."
He said there had always been significant inquiry from retired and semi-retired Aucklanders but now a growing number of professional couples with children were coming to the Bay.
The huge buyer interest was typified by Charles and Di Iraia's two-bedroom townhouse in Matua Rd that went on to the market this month. The morning after it was listed, it had 1400 Trade Me hits plus about another 600 hits on the Real Estate New Zealand and Eves websites.
Eves sales consultant Mary Nicholas, who is handling the sale, said the number of hits was typical for this end of the market in Matua.
She said the Iraias' property, with a rating valuation of $400,000, fell squarely into the price band that was "going nuts" - attracting first-home buyers, investors and older people wanting to downsize.
Mrs Nicholas said 21 groups went through the house at last Saturday's open home, a day popular with Aucklanders who came down for the day to check out properties. And some young couples with one or two children who had been looking at three-bedroom homes were now lowering their sights to more affordable two-bedroom homes, in order to gain a foothold in the market, she said.
Karen Worley, Eves and Bayleys group sales and marketing manager, said 2000 hits was typical for the area and price range, and was comparable with other similar socio-economic areas of Tauranga.
First National, Mount, Tauranga and Omokoroa owner Anton Jones said his business was getting a lot of Auckland investment buyers looking at Tauranga properties.
"We had a property listed on a Wednesday and by the Sunday it had four offers and two cash unconditional offers, so it's pretty hot."
Greg Purcell, franchise owner of Ray White Realty Focus in Mount and Papamoa, was seeing big numbers too but it was hard to manage.
"In some ways it can be quite hard, when you have a vast bulk of independent email inquiries all asking things, it's such a huge amount of time for sales people to follow those up and deal with them.
"But yes, there is no doubt that the reach through digital is massive now."
Harcourts managing director Nigel Martin said it was not unusual for properties to have a huge amount of activity online. Properties in the $250,000 to $500,000 vicinity were most likely to have the highest number of hits, he said.
"That price range caters for first-home buyers, investors and also families within certain suburbs."
The phenomenal number of hits was partly driven by people entering searches on Trade Me, so that whenever a property was listed that fitted their criteria it fired back an email message. Of the 1400 first wave of Trade Me hits for the Iraias' property, 50 went on watch lists - an indication of the numbers taking the listing seriously. The property, which was listed on a Thursday, had 60 watchers by the Saturday after.
Yesterday morning, the property had 4085 page views on Trade Me, with 118 watchers. On realestate.co.nz, the property had 1174 views and on the Eves website it had 490 views.
The Bay of Plenty Times this month reported house sales hit a 10-year high in Tauranga, with 216 homes sold in July. Sales were up 79 per cent on the same time last year in Tauranga and by 52 per cent in Mount Maunganui and Papamoa.
Additional reporting by Kim Fulton and Ruth Keber
