OneRoof property report: How long will it take the housing market to recover from Covid-19?
Beachside residents in Omaha would have - depending on your point of view - been the biggest winners or losers had Auckland Council calculated new capital values for every city home this year as planned.
The situation is better than many pundits had expected, though it comes on the back of strong price growth in the months before the lockdown began.
And now fresh data looks at how Auckland council CVs might have fared. It shows Omaha home values had jumped $281,000 in the three years since the council last calculated Auckland CVs on July 1, 2017.
That could have been good news for Omaha residents planning to sell and bad news for those staying put, according to a mock CV estimate of Auckland suburb values by analysts CoreLogic for the Herald on Sunday.
Those residents wanting to sell might have hoped a new higher CV calculated on current prices would help convince future buyers to pay more for Omaha homes.
However, residents with no intention to sell would likely have faced the prospect of a higher Auckland Council rates bill had new CVs raised home value estimates.
Life's a beach. Prices have skyrocketed in northern beach suburb Omaha since Auckland Council last estimated capital values in July 2017. Photo / Michael Craig
Luckily for them, council has instead sought permission to delay its new citywide CV estimates until next year.
Point Wells and Omaha Mike Pero Real Estate agent Angela Wains said CV estimates in her hot suburbs were completely out of date.
"I explain to people when they are purchasing here to literally ignore the CV because some of them are so far out of whack," she said.
"I've sold a home for $6 million that had a $4m CV."
Yet while Omaha and Point Wells prices had soared in the past three years, modest price rises were more typical for the rest of Auckland.
Close to 90 per cent of the 242 Auckland suburbs in the Herald on Sunday and CoreLogic mock CV estimate had gone up in value as of July 1, 2020.
The average price jump in these suburbs was $48,562. The combined rise in value was just over $10m.
Exclusive Whitford had the second-highest price jump after Omaha in dollar terms as home values in the eastern fringe suburb hit $2.48m - up $262,500 on its 2017 CV estimate.
Point Wells with a $1.39m median home value and $249,600 jump above CV came in next, followed by rural Kingseat, near Papakura in the south, where prices rose $182,500 above CV to $1.36m.
Most of the biggest price jumps were in rural and fringe suburbs.
Among the larger suburbs, Devonport jumped $68,000 above CV to $1.59m, while Mt Albert and Morningside both jumped $66,000 to values of $1.15m and $1.13m respectively.
Overall, 24 suburbs made price jumps higher than $100,000, while 38 jumped between $50,000 and $100,000 and 148 rose by less than $50,000.
When it came to the losers Herne Bay was the highest-profile suburb to experience a drop.
Values there fell $48,500 below CV to $1.65m. That was the second-worst drop after Shamrock Park and its lifestyle blocks fell $82,000 below CV to $1.89m.
Epsom had the third-biggest drop with prices falling $39,500 to $1.59m.
Mission Bay with a $24,000 fall to $1.38m and Remuera with a $19,000 decline to $1.53m were also among the 28 suburbs in which median values dropped below CVs.
Council had sought to delay this year's CV calculations, arguing that attempts to estimate home values in the uncertain market created by Covid-19 could produce distorted results that might be unfair to home owners.
A year's delay, on the other hand, would give the market time to normalise, council chief economist David Norman earlier said.
Auckland Council has delayed its three-yearly revaluation of the city's CVs. But the Herald has stepped in to do a mock CV estimate. Find out your suburb's value. Photo / 123rf
It comes as Auckland's housing market has bounced back from the Covid-19 lockdown with real estate agents and brokers reporting they are flat out trying to help buyers get into new homes.
In June, OneRoof editor Owen Vaughan said that, overall, the housing market was doing better than was forecast at the start of the Covid crisis.
"While the full impact of Covid-19 won't be clear until mortgage deferrals and the wage subsidy scheme come to an end, it seems the housing market has rebounded from the lockdown.
"The index shows that values in many locations are back to where they were at the start of the year, when the market was starting to run hot. The question for buyers and sellers is whether or not the bounce-back will be short-lived."
CoreLogic senior property economist Kelvin Davidson cautioned that house prices were likely to weaken later this year.
That was due to the Government's scheduled end of wage subsidies on September 1 and uncertainty created by New Zealand's General Elections a few weeks later, he said.
Key stats
• Eighty-seven per cent or 210 out of 242 suburbs rose in value compared with Auckland Council's 2017 CVs. House prices remained the same in four suburbs, while 28 fell in value. • The total increase in value across the 210 suburbs was $10.2m at an average rise of $48,561. • Twenty four suburbs rose by more than $100,000. Thirty-eight jumped between $50,000 and $100,000 and 148 rose by less than $50,000. • The 28 suburbs where prices dropped, fell by a combined $536,500 compared with their 2017 Auckland CVs.
