KEY POINTS:
Auckland house sellers are slashing their prices as they try to beat the mid-winter real estate market blues.
Buyer resistance to high prices has resulted in real estate agents displaying windows full of big mark-downs.
High mortgage interest rates, falling turnover, bargain-hunting buyers and vendors keen to get
the best price have made houses hard to sell in Auckland.
One of the best examples is 89b Island Bay Rd in Birkenhead. It is a large four-bedroom house with water views, on an 813sq m site.
It was initially listed for $849,000, a price conspicuously plastered on The Professionals' window.
Now, it can be bought for $699,000. Quotable Value valued it at $600,000 three years ago.
Local agent John Norton said discounting of this type was a sign of the times.
"It's all to do with the urgency of the sellers, because people with their heads screwed on are not selling."
Listing agent Brian Mearns said the house was appraised at the higher price two years ago, but people would not pay these sums today.
Mr Norton said the agency was also trying to sell a houses discounted from $375,000 to $360,000 and one marked down from $540,000 to $515,000.
Birkenhead homes took an average of 32 days to sell last year, he said. Now, the average was 52 days.
Few buyers had their bank's pre-approval to make an offer, open homes were slow and vendors were sticking to old price ideas.
Some buyers in Takapuna's new high-rise Sentinel apartment block are forfeiting their deposits because they have been unable to settle.
One couple who bought an apartment there for $750,000 were this month reported to have sold it for only $475,000.
But Mr Norton believes a turnaround is near. He says falling petrol prices, the election and the arrival of spring will be among the factors which will boost business.
Real Estate Institute president Murray Cleland this week said Auckland had been hardest hit by the national downturn.
Its median price had dropped $451 a day or $14,000 in a month, from $435,000 in June to $421,000 in July
Sales numbers fell from 2446 in July last year to 1441 last month.
BNZ chief economist Tony Alexander believes houses are taking longer to sell than the institute figures show.
If people cannot sell their house through one agent, he says, they switch to another "and the account goes back to zero".
Mr Cleland said the number of $1 million-plus houses selling in Auckland had fallen.
Barfoot & Thompson, Auckland's largest agency, sold 899 homes in July 2007 for $491 million, and 629 for $312 million last month.
Harcourts, New Zealand's largest chain, this month noted a 5 per cent drop in June average sale prices in the northern region, which includes Auckland, from last year's $548,000 to $522,000.
Harcourts' property on hand rose 60 per cent in the same period and sales fell 41 per cent.