Property Brokers regional manager Paul Whitaker said the market was busy, particularly for vendors with points of difference.
"Properties that are well-presented, in a good area and offer something a little bit different, are attracting unbelievable attention," he said. "As a whole, prices are firming every day, which is good, rather than softening, and we have seen it extremely busy at the moment from both buyers and sellers."
The Bay market was starting to shift in favour of the seller, Mr Whitaker said.
"It is finely balanced but I would say it is definitely leaning now towards the seller. There is a supply and demand thing going on but, even so, there are certain pockets of the market where if you have the right house, you can do extremely well. The other side to that are pockets which are tending to see resistance to price increase."
The busy market was expected at this time of year.
"Typically, February is the second busiest time of the year after spring, but also low interest rates and high buyer confidence."
Nationally, average asking prices for all property slipped by 1.1 per cent last month, compared with December 2014.
The average asking price across all property types for the three months to January was $498,550, dropping below $500,000 for the first time since October 2014.
Trade Me spokesman Nigel Jeffries said the easing in asking prices showed uncertainty around the strength of the market through the holiday period, but that should be temporary.
Mr Jeffries said asking prices had been increasing throughout 2014, despite the slight drop in January compared with December's numbers.
"Over the past 12 months we've seen asking prices increase by over 14 per cent, and over the past five years the expected selling prices have risen by just under 25 per cent."
Nationally, the market was no longer a two-horse race because asking prices were increasing beyond Auckland and Christchurch: "The majority of provincial regions are seeing strong year-on-year gains in average asking prices."
The data showed average asking prices had increased nationally by 14.1 per cent on the January 2014 quarter.
Compared with that quarter, the biggest price increase was in the Bay (27.3 per cent), followed by Southland (15.5 per cent) and Auckland (13 per cent) in the three months to January 2015.
Meanwhile, Gisborne declined (-6.7 per cent) while Northland (1.5 per cent) and the West Coast (2.2 per cent) had the lowest increases.
The Trade Me data also showed the average asking price for a small house in the three months to January was $330,550 while the asking price for a medium house was $505,550 - a 13.4 per cent increase on the January 2014 quarter.
Meanwhile, the average asking price for a large house was $842,650.
The average price for an apartment was $436,800, a 17 per cent increase on the January 2014 quarter, while the asking price for a town house was $462,900.
-The Property Price Index measures trends in the expectations of selling prices for residential property listings added to Trade Me Property by real estate agents and private sellers over the past three months.NZME.
