Why Auckland apartment values are increasing while Australia tanks: CoreLogic

Auckland apartment values are continuing to increase, flying in the face of a valuation collapse across the Tasman due to an oversupply, a property data and analytics business has found.

Nick Goodall, CoreLogic research head, said Auckland was seeing nothing like the issues in Sydney and Melbourne where there was shock due to rapidly tumbling unit prices.

"Median value growth of apartments in Auckland have actually increased very marginally over the last year, from $672,000 to $674,000," Goodall said.

Nearly half of new Sydney and Melbourne apartments are valued less than what the buyer paid off-the-plan, CoreLogic says.

The cities will have an apartment oversupply in the next two years which will further weigh on the falling property market. The data found 45 per cent of new apartments in Sydney settled in February were valued less than the off-the-plan purchase price compared to just 18 per cent a year earlier.

In Melbourne it was 46 per cent, jumping from 23 per cent in a year.

Goodall said valuations of Auckland flats or townhouses had dropped 1 per cent, from a median valuation of $686,000 to $679,000 " and it's the same percentage drop for houses $926,000 to $917,000"

"This could be down to affordability with more people able to afford deposits and mortgage rate payments for lower value apartments," Goodall said.

There was no comparison between the Australian and Auckland apartment markets, he said.

"They are very different and that really stems from the amount of construction they've had in the apartment markets over there - a lot, and not so much here," Goodall said.

Bindi Norwell, Real Estate Institute chief executive said: "We're not seeing the same kind of falls as Sydney and Melbourne. In Auckland, apartment prices are up 5.5 per cent from $722,000 for the three months to February 18 compared to $762,000 for the three months ending February 19."

But the rate of growth has slowed: in the previous 12 months, Auckland city apartments prices increased by 20.3 per cent.

"In Wellington, the rate of price growth increased in the last 12 months by 29.8 per cent compared to 1.1 per cent in the 12 months prior," Norwell said.

The Herald reported two years ago how developers cancelled many Auckland apartment projects, for example, Avondale's 91-unit Flo and the $250 million, 39-level, 309-unit St James Suites on Queen St beside the historic St James Theatre. In 2016, developer Relianz Holdings told buyers it was abandoning St James.

More than 35 Auckland multi-unit residential developments were cancelled in the space of 12 months, according to Pete Evans, Colliers International's residential project marketing national director in Auckland.

"There's been 35 [developments] that haven't gone ahead in the last 12 months," Evans said of apartments, terraced housing, townhouses and residential projects in 2016.

"Our research tracks that. Funding is often a risk and building costs going up is another reason," he said at the time.