Omaha homes have typically been reselling over the past year or two for $2 million more than what their owners originally paid for them. Photo / Jed Bradley
Omaha homes have typically been reselling over the past year or two for $2 million more than what their owners originally paid for them. Photo / Jed Bradley
Ōmaha’s beautiful beaches and lifestyle have long been a prized getaway for Auckland’s rich and famous.
But now property analysts have found another reason why the coastal hot spot is so popular.
It seems Ōmaha homeowners can’t miss when it comes time to resell.
There hasn’t been one Ōmaha home that has sold for a loss in the past five years, according to analysis by property website OneRoof and researcher Valocity.
Their records show that 130 Ōmaha homes resold in the last five years and all made a gain.
The sales collectively netted their owners $172 million more than what they previously paid for the houses.
This beachfront home on Kutai Lane, in Ōmaha, north of Auckland, has set a new record for the beach town, selling for more than $9m in 2023.
Ōmaha is one of 48 New Zealand suburbs identified by the OneRoof-Valocity team in which every house that sold over the last five years has made a gain.
Ōmaha had especially been buoyed by a massive jump in house prices, OneRoof editor Owen Vaughan said.
“The gross profit figures reflect the huge lift in Ōmaha’s overall average property value over the same period - from $1.7m to $2.7m - and the flight to beach properties post-Covid.
“Tight supply has worked in Ōmaha’s favour. It’s not unusual to see existing residents pounce on properties that are closer to the prime beach spots.”
The 48 “bulletproof” suburbs were identified as part of Valocity’s analysis of 304,079 house resales between March 2018 and March 2023.
Of those resales, 296,496 - or 97 per cent - made a profit, collectively earning their owners $103 billion more than what they paid for the homes.
On the other side of the coin, the 3 per cent of resales that made a loss in this period, collectively sold for $534m less than what they were bought for.
OneRoof’s Vaughan said researchers chose to analyse the five-year period because it covers the housing market’s most recent cycle.
That includes the massive post-Covid boom and then downturn that has followed over the past year and a half.
Vaughan said Ōmaha is the only one of the 48 suburbs that is located in Auckland.
The other 47 no-loss suburbs are scattered across the country.
They include 12 in the Wellington Region, nine in Otago (with eight of those being in Dunedin and one in Queenstown) and three in Rotorua.
Canterbury had just one suburb on the list - Rakaia, in Ashburton.
“What’s heartening about the resale figures is that the profits are not confined to the wealthiest suburbs,” OneRoof’s Vaughan said.
“The combination of high demand for more affordable homes and lower listings volumes in lower priced suburbs has benefited homeowners in some surprising spots.”
“The profits in Dunedin and Rotorua also reflect the over-performance of the country’s regional markets pre-Covid and the unusual sales boom across New Zealand post-Covid.”
The OneRoof-Valocity team point out they define gain as selling for more than the previous purchase price, while loss is defined as selling for less than the previous purchase price.
The data does not take into account money that homeowners may have spent renovating, upgrading or maintaining their property, or how much they owe the bank.
Suburbs, such as Ōmaha, where homeowners tend to hang on to their properties longer before reselling also may have a better chance of selling for a gain, simply because more time has passed between the purchase and resale, Vaughan said.
There’s also more good news for homeowners in the 48 “bulletproof” suburbs.
Not only has every sale made a gain since 2018, but the size of the gain has typically been going up.
Ōmaha highlights that trend.
The typical Ōmaha home sold for a $446,500 gain in 2018, yet in 2022, the median resale gain was $2.21m.
In terms of individual sales, Auckland’s Herne Bay had the home with the biggest resale gain over the last five years.
The owners of the Marine Parade home originally bought it for $5.25 m in 2002.
Then in 2020 they sold it for $23.5m, earning a whopping $18.3m resale gain.
However, the $18m gain didn’t go straight into the owner’s pockets as profit.
They had earlier extensively refurbished the waterfront home, which now stretches over 660sq m of living space and boasts a swimming pool and huge “pōhutukawa-framed” section.
The biggest gain for an individual sale in the first three months of 2023 was $11.3m made on a Whitford mansion that sold for $20m at the start of the year, the OneRoof-Valocity research found.
Across New Zealand as a whole - not just the 48 “bulletproof” suburbs - the highest gains during the five-year period were made in 2021.
