Tauranga is also heating up, with anecdotal evidence of Aucklanders cashing up in hopes of being mortgage-free in the popular destination. Average house prices there are now $485,561 -- having risen by 7.3 per cent since June last year.
Nelson is up 3.1 per cent to $413,239 and Christchurch -- which may be showing the first signs of having more properties than buyers -- is up 3.2 per cent to $474,269.
For really affordable property, look at Rotorua where average house prices are at a modest $272,508, having gone up just 1.5 per cent in the past 12 months.
Dunedin's average house price is $296,048 (up 2.6 per cent) and you can get a real bargain in Invercargill where property prices have sunk 1.6 per cent to $208,191 -- the only area in the country to have dipped, says CoreLogic.
Wellington is sitting at $459,366 (up 1.5 per cent), in Napier the average prices is $330,156 (up 1.6 per cent) and Queenstown Lakes is up by a massive 8.3 per cent to $719,562.
Although the rate of property price rises in Auckland is showing the first signs of cooling, they are still going up -- just not as quickly as they were a few months back. And who's to say what will happen once we head back into spring and the market comes alive once again.
Auckland is currently short of good stock for sale, there are plenty of buyers and some fixed interest rates deals are now well below 5 per cent and will likely drop further.
Median price
Home loan affordability is down in Auckland, according to Barfoot & Thompson. It now takes 65.2 per cent of the median take home pay to buy a median-priced home in the city. The figure has gone up by 6.4 percentage points since May last year (58.8).
It's not surprising then that consumer debt is up 6.3 per cent across the country and now sits at more than $15 billion.
