Cream of $10.2m crop

WHAT A VIEW: Twilight from the balcony of the dual apartment on Grey Street that sold for a record $1.9m earlier this year. It is one of eight million-dollar houses sold in Gisborne so far this year. Picture by Kerry Fox

Gisborne has seen a big rise in sales of houses worth $1 million or more, data from the Real Estate Institute shows.

The Million Dollar Price Report, released by REINZ this week, shows that in the first half of 2019 eight “million-dollar” houses were sold in Gisborne in the first six months of the year.

This compares with just three in the same period last year.

The houses sold this year were located in Awapuni, Whataupoko, Wainui and Okitu.

They fetched a combined value $10,192,000 — $6.2m than was sold in the first half of 2018.

Gisborne’s 166 percent lift in million-dollar sales was in contrast to the situation in Auckland, REINZ chief executive Bindi Norwell said.

“Nationally, 628 fewer houses over the million-dollar-mark were sold when compared to the same time last year —decreasing from 5591 to 4963.

“Auckland was at the forefront of this decline, with 722 fewer high-end houses being sold.”

However, when looking at New Zealand, excluding Auckland, the number of million-dollar-plus properties sold increased by 6.7 percent.

It has been led by Gisborne (+166.7 percent), Manawatu/Wanganui (+114.3 percent), Hawke’s Bay (47.4 percent) and Tasman (+16.7 percent).

“It’s always promising to see an increase in sales across other parts of the country where real estate continues to go from strength-to-strength,” said Ms Norwell. “With some renewed confidence entering the market, including Auckland, in the last few months, it will be interesting to see what happens in the second half of the year.”