Auckland's golden property quartet drops in value

Reporter·Herald on Sunday·

3 Jun, 2017 05:00 PM3 mins to read

Herne Bay remains the country's priciest suburb despite a dip in prices. Photo: Supplied by Ollie Wall Real Estate

Auckland's golden quartet of $2m suburbs has lost some of its shine after the majority dipped in value and one of its members fell below the exclusive threshold.

The waterside suburb of Stanley Pt dipped below the exclusive threshold, to $1.95m at the end of April, after having just made the cut in January.

But the latest QV figures, to be revealed in its latest quarterly property report out tomorrow, showed the residential suburb's estimated median value dropped by $68,700 from the $2.02m three months prior.

Herne Bay managed to hold on to its title as the country's priciest suburb, but it too was not immune to taking a hit as the market appeared to cool down.

The QV figures reflected a $3250 drop in price in the three months to the end of April, from $2,468,000 to $2,464,750.

In second place was St Mary's Bay, which dipped to $2,228,900 a drop of $42,650 since the end of January.

Remuera, which had only just ticked over the $2m mark at the end of January, was the only one of the golden quartet to continue its upward climb.

Its estimated median value grew by $32,750 to $2,052,300 at the end of April.

Meanwhile the numbers of those in the $1m+ club suburb had also dipped slightly in recent months; dropping from 104 to 102 at the end of April.

Auckland's overall estimated median had also dropped $3869 (0.4 per cent) in the three months to the end of April, from $1,047,699.

QV national spokesperson Andrea Rush said some suburbs had seen a drop in values in the first quarter of this year.

"These included some higher valued suburbs and some more entry-level suburbs."

Rush said this was likely a result of a slow-down in buyer activity introducing stricter lending criteria "making it harder to gain finance across the board".

"This has led to a lower number of sales and less competition and this has been coupled with an increase in listings levels which means there has been less upward pressure on prices."

However, she said year-on-year prices continued to grow in all of Auckland's suburbs.

The estimated values, provided by CoreLogic for the QV quarterly property report, were reached by calculating a weighted average of the suburb on the basis of the estimated market value of each property.

Property Council chief executive Connal Townsend said the figures could be a sign that efforts by the Reserve Bank to dampen down the property market and increased property developments were having an effect.

"We are just starting to see the very first glimmerings of the problem with housing stock starting to be relieved," he said.

"It took us a decade to get into and I hope it won't take a decade to get out."

He said as long as more work was done to increase housing stock and surrounding infrastructure the market should continue to cool.

However, he said issues around a shortage of labourers in construction, cost of building materials and the speed that builds could hamper progress.