Auckland house turnover soars

Barfoot & Thompson said it sold 998 Auckland homes in July. Photo / NZH

Homes are selling at such a speed in Auckland that the number of properties left available at the end of July was the lowest level in seven years.

A press release today from Barfoot & Thompson, Auckland largest real estate firm, said it sold 998 Auckland homes last month at an average price of $591,444. Prices were up slightly.

"For a July, this number of sales was at the very top end of the scale in recent years," said managing director Peter Thompson.

"At the end of the month it left us with only 3975 properties on our books, the lowest number since late 2005."

High turnover was causing the low number of homes available, rather than a low number of people listing properties, Thompson said.

The number of and speed at which properties were being sold was "out of the ordinary" for this time of the year.

Barfoot & Thompson listed 1295 properties in the month, which was 23.3 per cent more than in the same month last year.

"However, demand in July was exceptionally strong and we sold 28.3 per cent more homes in July than in the same month last year."

Thompson said the firm had seen the number of homes on its books at month's end fall for five consecutive months.

Prices were increasing, but not spiralling upwards, he said.

July's average sales price was up by slightly more than $2000 over that for June.

"In the past three months the price difference between the May and July average price is modest at $9000, or a movement of less than 2 per cent."

Last July at total of 50 properties sold in the $1 million plus category, but this jumped to 82 in July 2012.

About half of all properties sold in Auckland went for less than $500,000, Thompson said.