An aerial view of Mount Albert in Auckland, New Zealand.
An aerial view of Mount Albert in Auckland, New Zealand.
How many Auckland houses are being sold each month by the city’s biggest agency, are prices rising or declining, how many places are available on the market as at the end of December and what does this all tell us?
Those are some of the questions answered in the latest data from Barfoot & Thompson, out this morning.
In December’s first week, 275 Auckland residential properties were signed up to be sold, falling to 258 places in the second week and 227 in the week before Christmas.
Perhaps people had the festive season on their minds, rather than sales contracts.
Back in 2020, numbers were much higher - 469 sales in that pre-Christmas week that year but that was the highest December third week since 2014 when the numbers tend to sit more around the 200+/week mark.
Take a different figure: sales for the month based on unconditional contracts but commissions paid: the agency recorded 830 of those deals in December, down on the 956 in November but well ahead of last January’s 431.
As for prices, the average last year by that agency was $1,104,030. December’s average price was $1,191,031, ahead of November’s $1,185,820.
Let’s take the longer-term trends and we can see that in 2016, the agency’s average sales price was just $886,816 but that hit six figures for the first time in 2021 to reach $1,153,252.
Yet the rises weren’t quite over: average sale prices continued apace through to 2022 when they were $1,176,087.
So last year, Barfoot & Thompson’s average sales price of $1,104,030 was a reduction of $72,057 on the 2022 year, reflective of a tougher market when high interest rates took their toll.
As for the number of places for sale, as at December’s third week, the agency had 4383 residential properties for buyers to choose from: apartments, stand-alone homes, townhouses, bare land, etc, encompassing a range across the market.
Is that figure significant? Not particularly because back in 2012, the agency had an average of 4171 available listings each month and numbers hover in that 3000/4000 range regularly.
Peter Thompson is the agency's managing director and he cited December as a great month for prices.
How many places are being listed each month? Again, those numbers hover above 1000+/month. So back in 2012, Barfoot & Thompson had an average monthly listing rate of about 1345 and last year that figure was quite similar at 1325.
But it was median prices which the agency’s managing director Peter Thompson chose to highlight today.
“The Auckland property market finished the 2023 year on a 12-month high with prices and sales holding on to the strong gains made since August. December’s strong finish to the year has set the market up to have a positive start to 2024,” he said.
The median sales price at $1,045,000 was the highest for any month in 2023 and 9.5 per cent higher than at the year’s low point in July. It was also up 2.7 per cent on November’s median price. The median sales price over the last four months of 2023 increased by 3.9 per cent.
Sales in December at 830 were excellent for a three-week month, and nearly 60 per cent higher than in December the previous year, Thompson noted.
But the longer term figures also showed that the agency’s Auckland’s median sale price for all of 2023 was $998,479 which was below 2022′s average median at $1,117,166.
The median sales price by that agency first hit six figures back in 2021 when it averaged $1,101,733.
Kelvin Davidson, CoreLogic NZ chief property economist, said on December 13 that 2023 had been a year of two halves for house sales nationally.
Sale volumes hit the lowest level in about 40 years in April, with a 12-month moving total of just 60,475, while national property values declined a further 5 per cent over the year.
Featherston was the weakest performer over the past year with values down 16.6 per cent, while the top-ranked Sunshine Bay in Queenstown saw 6.6 per cent growth, which is relatively moderate annual growth for the top-performing suburb.
Herne Bay maintained its position as the most expensive suburb with a median value of $3,161,400. Cobden in Grey is the most affordable suburb at $258,200, Davidson said.
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 23 years, has won many awards, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
