Rents and house prices continue to soar in Hawke's Bay

Hawke's Bay continues to be a strong growth region for house prices and rents. Photo / File

Another month, another new record for house prices and rental costs in Hawke's Bay.

OneRoof and the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand's recent reports both show sustained growth in the Hawke's Bay's property market, and Trade Me's Rental Price Index shows rent is also increasing at the fastest rate of any region in NZ.

OneRoof editor Owen Vaughan said Hawke's Bay continues to be a growth market so far this year.

He said the housing boom in Tauranga was now expanding its way down the rest of the North Island, as people were priced out of houses further north.

He attributed the growth in Hawke's Bay to a great lifestyle coupled with comparatively affordable prices.

The OneRoof property report showed Hawke's Bay saw an increase of 12.9 per cent in median house prices from January 2018 to January 2019.

Vaughan said about a quarter of the buyers in Hawke's Bay were first-home buyers and 15 per cent were investors with more than one property.

He said this showed while Hawke's Bay was an attractive place to invest, locals were not being driven out of the market.

The Real Estate Institute of New Zealand's monthly statistics showed median house prices in Hawke's Bay hit record prices, one of five regions across New Zealand to do so.

Sale prices had gone up 6.4 per cent to $472,500, with 231 houses sold across the region in February.

Of Hawke's Bay's districts, Napier remained the most expensive place to buy, with the median property value at $510,000. Hastings was next, at $468,200.

The cheapest place to by property in Hawke's Bay was Wairoa, with the median house price $136,000.

The median price of houses sold in Wairoa dropped an incredible 49.6 per cent on this time last year.

However this was based on a very limited number of stock, with only nine houses sold in the district in February.

Rents were also up in Hawke's Bay, with the Trade Me Rental Price Index showing the region had the steepest rise in rent over the past year of anywhere in the country.

Hawke's Bay rents rose 10.4 per cent in the year to February 2019.

On average it now costs $425 a week to rent a house in Hawke's Bay.

Nationally, rents rose 5.3 per cent in the same period.

The next highest increase was Manawatu, with rents up 9.4 per cent, meanwhile Canterbury, the West Coast and Otago all saw no increases to rent, and Malborough saw rents go down 4.7 per cent.