There was good and bad news from the residential property auctions held in January this year.
First let's get the bad news out of the way.
There were fewer properties auctioned in January this year compared to January last year.
Interest.co.nz monitored 199 residential property auctions in January this year, compared to 278 in January last year. That's a reduction of 28%.
The good news is the sales rate was higher this year and prices were just a tiny bit firmer.
Of the 199 properties offered at the auctions monitored by interest.co.nz in January this year, 103 sold under the hammer, giving an overall sales rate of 52%.
Of the 278 properties monitored auctions in January last year, 116 sold under the hammer, giving a sales rate of 42%.
The last time the sales rate nudged above 50% was in July 2023.
Prices might have been marginally firmer, with 43% of the properties that sold in January this year fetching prices above or equal to their rating valuations, compared to 39% in January last year.
January is usually a fairly quiet month for auction activity and this year was no different. However, the relatively high sales rate could be a signal the market is starting the main summer selling season on a slightly firmer note compared to last year.
But it's early days, and we will need to see how things shape up over the next few weeks as the market ramps up for its busiest time of the year, before we can draw firm conclusions.
The individual results for all of the properties offered at the auctions monitored by interest.co.nz, including the selling prices and QV valuations of those that sold, are available on our Residential Auction Results page.
47 Comments
https://www.interest.co.nz/property/131574/buyers-likely-retain-whip-ha…?
A large number of property withdrawals (3,755 in December, up 43.5% from the previous year) indicates that many sellers are still unwilling to accept current market prices. Combine that with the struggles in trying to rent properties out and yield/costs being what they are house prices are not going up anytime soon. This can only be good for our society - not so much for the over leveraged and greedy.
In 2024, 68,817 homes sold, which is below the 10-year average of 78,315 https://qem.infometrics.co.nz/new-zealand/housing/house-sales
At the same time, over 33,000 properties were withdrawn, up 24.3% from the previous year. That means nearly one in three listings didn’t sell—not exactly a sign of a booming market. Sure, homes are selling, but a record number of sellers are pulling out because they obviously can’t get the price they need/want. If demand was really that strong, we wouldn’t be seeing so many withdrawals.
The number withdrawn doesn't mean a thing unless you have numbers of those withdrawn which then sold after relisting.
Your linked article shows that 68,000 properties sold last year. From some of the comments on this site, you would think that only 5000 properties were sold! The average for the past 10 years is 78,000, so considering that we have been in a recession for the past 2 years, 68,000 is not a bad figure.
I tend not to wade into these debates but context is what matters here. Homes will always sell at one rate or another. People need a place to live, life circumstances change and they need to move, etc. And there are good reasons to want to own a home for many.
The real debate is "will housing as an asset class perform the same over the next 40 years as it did over the last?". And on this the signs aren't good IMO. We had 40 years of declining interest rates from roughly 1980-2020, this seems highly unlikely to repeat itself for a number of reasons. There have also been deep (and global) shifts in how housing is viewed as an asset so barriers are falling to increasing supply.
On the more local level, rents are falling in NZ and apparently much more difficult to get tenants which will mean further falls. A time of falling rents but rising house prices would be a very unusual combination especially with interest rates what they are.
All morality aside (which is important to do when considering investments), housing doesn't look like a great investment to me. If you need the utility value etc then of course worthwhile to buy one. But if the price you are paying (or willing to pay) is predicated on the idea of comparable capital gains as people who bought 20-40 years ago, I would be very cautious. There will be diamonds out there but there will also be a lot of rough.
The economy was performing well before housing turned into a get-rich-quick and retire-early scheme. I suggest that keeping prices stable or in a gentle decline, combined with a capital gains tax and lower debt-to-income limits for investors, would help eliminate this behaviour and better serve the majority of New Zealanders.
Elephant meet room
by Amokk | 1st Feb 25, 6:35am
https://www.interest.co.nz/property/131574/buyers-likely-retain-whip-ha…?
A large number of property withdrawals (3,755 in December, up 43.5% from the previous year) indicates that many sellers are still unwilling to accept current market prices. Combine that with the struggles in trying to rent properties out and yield/costs being what they are house prices are not going up anytime soon. This can only be good for our society - not so much for the over leveraged and greedy.
As above so below. In all seriousness - you appear to be so against house prices stabilising and/or decreasing slightly (as the facts indicate they are) for a very long time - why?
by Amokk | 1st Feb 25, 8:16am
In 2024, 68,817 homes sold, which is below the 10-year average of 78,315 https://qem.infometrics.co.nz/new-zealand/housing/house-sales
At the same time, over 33,000 properties were withdrawn, up 24.3% from the previous year https://www.interest.co.nz/property/131574/buyers-likely-retain-whip-hand-housing-market-heads-2025 That means nearly one in three listings didn’t sell—not exactly a sign of a booming market. Sure, homes are selling, but a record number of sellers are pulling out because they obviously can’t get the price they need/want. If demand was really that strong, we wouldn’t be seeing so many withdrawals.
See my comment above in reply to a previous post of yours.
I am not against prices stabilizing and I'm not sure where you got that idea from. House prices will remain flat, like I have said in many previous comments. Obviously the market is not booming, and I don't think anyone has said that it is.
I believe that Auckland is overpriced, and prices there need to drop to make them affordable.
Migration might turn negative this year...good luck..
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/top/540471/nz-could-become-net-exporter-of-p…
From the FB Property Investors Chat Group NZ https://imgur.com/a/3YSy8O2 - a sign of things to come.....
Look at us, living in a country of such abundance and space, yet competing so desperately with each other over basic human needs such as shelter.
There’s a theory that I want to examine closely, which argues that property prices may not fall significantly and in fact, may rise again in future, further out of reach of young people and first home buyers.
Economics has been criticised for having these elaborate mathematical models, yet not taking into how wealth inequality in a society affects the distribution of resources, such as access to affordable shelter, health care etc.
The theory is as following: As inequality rises in a society, the wealthy don’t generally spend more of that added income on frivolous consumption, creating more jobs and GDP growth like we’re led to believe. Trickle down economics has been conclusively debunked, it’s nonsense…
…no, as inequality rises the wealthy spend their extra cash on accumulating assets, including houses and property. Ordinary people (from a historical point of view, recently known as the middle class), no longer able to compete for those assets, get eviscerated.
This hoarding of assets by the elites occurs over and over again all throughout human history, from ancient Rome’s rich patricians buying up land and accumulating vast estates thus pushing small farmers off the land into urban slums and poverty… to modern-day regimes where the ultra-rich will happily monopolise a country’s resources while the vast majority live next door in slums.
Even in democracies like the United States open oligarchy is becoming normalised (the Trump/Musk thing). Young people in the States too are concerned about housing unaffordability while billionaires have never had it better.
Orwell’s pigs in Animal Farm comes to mind. The inequalities are creeping in slowly over time, barely noticeable on a yearly timescale. We bicker and argue about interest rates and house price/income ratios while we’re sleepwalking into a two tiered society.
Over the last two generations a paradigm shift could well be occurring in our country once viewed as rather egalitarian and also formally known as the quarter acre pavlova paradise where young people once expected to be able to buy a home and raise a family without getting into a hideous amount of debt.
Today, productive work competes less favourably compared to non productive work such as earned income off assets (parasitic as some refer to it here.)
And as is occurring worldwide; the wealthy get yet richer. They’ll carry on competing with each other with their growing pools of money over assets hence the reason why the prices may not drop.
Ordinary people, will find it harder to compete. I think this is already happening in New Zealand. The very conditions and lack of opportunities that many of our ancestors escaped from in Victorian Britain are beginning to repeat themselves in New Zealand, today.
This is why many of our young are leaving. It is human nature to seek opportunity elsewhere.
Interestingly, history also shows that every fiat currency is devalued over time and in every single case, eventually fails. The inflation that occurs, affects the poorest first whereas the asset holders are insulated to a degree.
So, every time there is a GFC or covid event in future, (and it will happen again) governments will once again make the money printer go brrrrr. It’ll be the wealthy that’ll get first grabs on assets before the prices shoot up again, adjusting for the inevitable inflation.
I believe people are noticing an accelerating decline in the quality of institutions in western democracies, and have lost significant trust in the political system worldwide. I believe a large part of this is because of rising inequality as shown by the Gini coefficient and by scholars such as Professor Wilkinson (“The Spirit Level,” recommended reading).
People know the system is rigged to favour the elite. ‘Leaders’ don’t set examples, they expect privilege and increasing wealth, are mostly out of touch and say things such as, “I’m wealthy, I’m sorted.”
I’m not a communist. I don’t despise the rich as I know I’ll be accused of and I know many work hard to acquire their assets. But newsflash; most ordinary people work hard too, earn an income many multiples less than a wealthy person sitting on passive income and yet are told it’s normal to be competing with these people and their ever-increasing fortunes for the same overpriced assets!
I strongly believe that if we don’t choose as a society to address growing wealth inequality then the middle class will continue to be gutted, while the wealthy accumulate more and more houses that your own children will never be able to afford.
A great, insightful comment. Appreciated.
Coupled with the dynamic you describe is the fact that a significant amount of economic policy is essentially about ensuring nothing is left out of 'the market'. That is, everything and anything should be available for purchase - often euphemistically described as 'providing investment opportunities' when in reality they're often just rent-seeking opportunities.
Thanks. It was written out of frustration really. Yes, neoliberalism is a terrible idea and rather crudely allows the wealth to trickle up, eventually creating poverty for the rest of us.
I don’t know why we put up with it to be honest. Probably something to do with ‘bread and circuses’ I guess.
I strongly believe that if we don’t choose as a society to address growing wealth inequality then the middle class will continue to be gutted, while the wealthy accumulate more and more houses that your own children will never be able to afford.
History tends to lean towards nothing happening and productivity not returning until things go tits up.
The fact it'll occur this time under an open democracy implies we have to be led, and can't make effective communal action.
This is what will happen if we try to get any more cycles out of NZ Housing pump n dump...
https://youtu.be/a2AJvCPcNUE The Failure of Chinese Real Estate || Peter Zeihan
No it's not. We've had multiple house price cycles over a timeframe China hasn't even experienced one. They're on Japans path, of one big expansions and contraction, not ours.
China can reverse it's demographics via migration. Any first world nation can, and at a greater rate in future, if it wanted to.
There will be an end. Good luck to you if you're betting it's now.
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.