Prices are officially rising! New Zealand’s latest November property report reveals where house prices are climbing fastest

After a year and a half of falling house prices and rising interest rates in New Zealand’s housing market, the market trend has fundamentally changed. The national average house price has recorded quarterly growth for the second consecutive month. In this article, we use the latest property data to analyse recent housing market trends across the regions.

The latest OneRoof-Valocity House Value Index shows that house price growth is gathering momentum across most of the country, with more areas recording increases. In the three months to the end of October, house prices in Auckland and Canterbury rose by more than 2%, while the national average increased by 1.7% to NZ$952,000.

Only Nelson and the West Coast continued to record some decline in house prices, while the pace of decline slowed in Northland and Taranaki. OneRoof-Valocity data shows that average house prices across the country’s seven main cities recorded quarterly growth for the first time since March 2022, with Dunedin and Queenstown Lakes joining the recovery in October.

OneRoof property editor Owen Vaughan said the major urban centres were performing most strongly, with the trend beginning to spread to smaller regional cities. Housing market conditions in Whangarei, Napier and Invercargill all improved in October. Christchurch remained the biggest surprise, with strong demand from first-home buyers lifting its average house price by 2.5% over the quarter to NZ$768,000. However, the supply of properties for sale remained insufficient. New listings in Canterbury in October were down 3.4% year on year, while total listings were up just 7.5% compared with October last year. By contrast, Auckland’s new listings in October rose by nearly 2% year on year, but a surge in sales reduced the overall stock of homes for sale by 8.3%.

Vaughan said New Zealand’s general election had affected listing numbers to some extent, with many sellers hesitating ahead of the 14 October vote. Following the election, the number of properties for sale on OneRoof increased slightly. Although new listings over the past fortnight were not enough to draw firm conclusions about the market’s direction, growing confidence and expectations of rising house prices appeared to be gaining unstoppable momentum. The data shows that the median price searched by prospective buyers nationwide rose 2% month on month, while Auckland’s median search price increased 5%. Search prices do not necessarily translate into final sale prices, but they provide a useful reflection of market sentiment.

OneRoof-Valocity’s data also tracks house price trends across 927 suburbs nationwide. In the three months to the end of month 10, 566 suburbs recorded price growth, nearly 100 more than at the end of September. Christchurch continued to record the largest gains, with Merivale and Fendalton leading the rankings with quarterly growth of 8.1% and 7.9% respectively. House prices in six of the city’s suburbs have now returned to their peaks, while another nine are within NZ$10,000 of their peak values. Notably, most suburbs recording price increases, 363 in total, had average house prices below NZ$1,000,000, reflecting the continued dominance of first-home buyers in the market.

Material for this article was sourced online