KEY POINTS:
The property slump is yielding unexpected dividends for buyers, with $145,000 wiped off the price of one inner-city Auckland house in little over a year.
The large four-bedroom house in Herne Bay sold for $935,000 at a lively auction in March last year, but the price plummeted to $790,000 when it was resold in June after being on the market for weeks.
The new owners, who did not want to be named, had been looking in the area for some time, and were pleased with their "good buy".
"We still need to renovate, but we think we're lucky," said the woman. "A lot of people around this area just sit and hold, rather than selling."
She said their ability to offer an unconditional cash settlement helped them bag the house, and people keen to buy in the blue-chip suburb and surrounding areas might need to be in a similar situation.
"But now's the time to buy," she added, noting several houses in the area had been on sale for long periods, and there was at least one mortgagee sale nearby in recent months.
That's a big change from when the property sold last year.
A former tenant, Lee Dewerson, estimated about 80 people attended the auction with bidding tight.
"There was a lot of interest, and people came back into the room for that property."
Commentators said inner-city Auckland suburbs were stable and Real Estate Institute figures show the May median sale price rose by almost a third on the previous month.
Harcourts chief executive Bryan Thomson said sales were slightly softer but "not significantly" in Herne Bay and surrounding suburbs, which were consistently "sought after".
"The more blue-chip central Auckland areas at the moment, which very much includes this area, are extremely short of listings for sale," said Thomson.
"It is one part of the market where we are struggling to provide the type of stock people are looking for."
Ray White Real Estate national chief Carey Smith said sales in the area were consistent.
Properties have been selling fairly quickly or being taken off the market if they were not getting results because the owner-occupiers did not have to sell immediately.
"Properties are still getting a degree of interest, but vendors are starting to need to adjust their expectations from what they were a year ago."
Valuer Jonathan Ford, who specialises in pricing up homes in central Auckland for Property InDepth, said there was buoyancy _ and that interest from buyers had increased in the past month.
"What I'm finding is that quality, well-presented property will sell, not as quickly as it had in the past, but if people aren't desperate to get out they won't be too far off their expectation [of price]."
Ford was surprised by the lower sale price in Herne Bay and said, overall, prices were sitting at a similar level to last year.
