A rapidly growing portion of those deserting Auckland's inflated property market are going to Northland, according to Trade Me Property.
The average asking price for a Northland house listed on the online platform reached another record in December, hitting $521,750. This is 21% annual increase.
Over the past five years, the average asking price in Northland has risen by just under $150,000 (40%), with more than half of that increase coming in the last 12 months
Trade Me Property Head, Nigel Jeffries, says the much discussed ‘halo regions’ around Auckland – Bay of Plenty, Waikato and Northland – have seen enormous increases in average asking prices over the last 18 months as the Auckland market has exploded.
However, until recently, Northland was lagging behind the other two regions in terms of growth.
In November it “blasted” through the $500,000 mark and continued climbing in December.
Northland was one of the seven (of 15) regions that hit record highs in December. The others included Gisborne, Marlborough, Manawatu, Nelson, Northland, Southland and Waikato.
Nelson and Marlborough experienced particularly good growth.
“Excluding Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, the average asking price for property in provincial New Zealand hit a new record high in December, up almost 14% to $464,600. That’s a jump of $55,450 since January, a faster rate than our largest cities over the same period,” Jeffries says.
'We don’t see the market taking off again any time soon'
Meanwhile the average asking price in Auckland was almost flat in December, down $3000 or 0.3% compared to November, to $908,850.
“Auckland has experienced a few quieter months recently and we don’t see the market taking off again any time soon,” Jeffries says.
"We're seeing some of the lowest levels of new listings that the market has experienced. There's a real reluctance of existing owners to sell. Part of the problem there is that if they sell in this market without buying, they're stuck.
"We don't see Auckland going backwards. We see it continuing in growth mode, but the probability of it having similar growth rates to what it has had in the last year or two is pretty low."
Jeffries believes unaffordability, tougher lending restrictions and looming interest rate rises will subdue growth.
“Home owners in the city don’t need to despair though, with the average asking price in Auckland jumping 13% during 2016,” he says.
According to Trade Me Property, large houses (5+ bedrooms) showed the greatest year-on-year growth in average asking price in December, up 17%.
Although the majority of large homes are in Auckland, demand was hot around the rest of the country too. Outside Auckland, the average asking price for a large property rose 16.6% during 2016, landing at $793,950.
Jeffries says urban properties started 2016 strongly, but by December lagged the overall property market.
“The average asking price for an apartment, town house or unit eased and it could be down to the tighter restrictions placed on investors [40% deposit needed].
“We think sellers have been forced to adjust their expectations to attract the smaller pool of buyers. Prices are still strong, but they haven’t grown like we’d anticipated early in 2016.
“In Auckland, apartments are up 7.5% in the past year, with units up 9.1%. The average asking price for both is now well over $600,000 which would require a deposit of close to a quarter of a million dollars.”
24 Comments
..for how much longer? just another price we are paying for population growth..
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2017/01/crab-fisherman-blame…
Just for balance sake....
I was at Uretiti beach during Christmas 2001 and the water close to shore was a mass of fish carcasses that had come in from an offshore trawler that had processed its catch. It happens! Tide and commercial activity can do that.
All I'm saying is that it may not be as population related as we all think.
(NB: Uretiti Beach is now not as accessible as it once was due to the Council blocking access through the caravan park on the shoreline. I know the area well!)
Uretiti Beach has become the immigrant toilet of Northland. Up to a thousand people of foreign ethnicity have arrived at the same time in charter busses and what have you, for a day at the beach and on leaving make no attempt to take their rubbish home or cover their improvised toilet proceeds.
The locals have created beach wardens to try and educate these people and to try and defuse a very tense situation that is developing. Even the media that normally applauds our immigration policies is appalled at the behavior.
The trouble with Uretiti (and Waipu/Mangawai/Bream Bay) is that it's too close to Auckland. The Asian crab fisherman (literally) shitting in our nest are not locals.
We are getting a huge number of Auckland refugees moving to the Bay of Islands so I'm not surprised to see the prices rising. Quite an influx of Western Europeans and North Americans as well. It's a great place but you do have to be a bit more creative about how you earn a living as well as accepting that pay is less. Your typical modern, dependant as a baby, city dweller expecting to fall into a high paying job will most likely fail and return to the "maggots on a piece of rotting meat" lifestyle they're accustomed to. Good!
bay of islands has always been attractive for expats who want to escape their past,buy a cafe or a B&B,tell everybody you were a nuclear scientist or roadie for a famous rock group.in the 80s they reckoned there were 100 surviving battle of britain pilots and 150 of them were living in kerikeri.
Darwin wasn't impressed:
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Gov09_06Rail-t1-body-d9-d2…
Ahhh Northland - always the last to rise and the first to drop once the music stops.
I love the beaches and scenery, spent a few teenage summers in the 80's up on the Ahipara Dunes, BOI, or Whangaroa Harbour in "altered states" on the local grown product contemplating life....
But apart from that there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING THERE..certainly no decent jobs or near term future prospects for them - and sadly it's pretty feral just underneath the surface with generational welfare dependency and terrible crime statistics despite multiple governments trying to "fix" it.
So, if your not selling up and retiring for lifestyle....OR you have an online based business you can run from Northland then you must be certifiably, stark raving mad to "invest" there - LOL...seriously......
Reminds me very much of 2007/2008 when the large Japanese company I worked for was supplying electronics for the "new booming Northland market"... and everyone took a bath. In fact I'd love to see the prices from 2007 compared to now?
If I ever needed further confirmation of the "you cant lose with property" insanity we're in - this is it.
Northland going crazy is another canary dying in the coal mine for me.
But of course just an opinion......
I'm not sure when you last visited Kaitaia Mike but just in the last couple of years there has been a pretty sustantial investment (largely commercial) on the northern edge of town.
Northland is a very diverse region so it is really not helpful to treat it as one economy. It does make some important contributions - dairy, beef, fisheries (longest coastline in NZ?) aquaculture, forestry, bee keeping, fruit - kiwi, citrus avocado etc. but probably too many folk in some areas not really doing anything to help themselves or anyone else. What some would call 'struggling' but not a good choice of word as it implies some sort of effort.
There is still a glut of coastal sections left over from the boom of subdivisions prior to the GFC.
Every coastal town seems to have a subdivision of pre 2008 sections. They were originally sold off the plans to deposit down speculators who now can't sell them without a 50% loss.
Houses in town and on lifestyle blocks are in big demand but coastal sections 100m from the beach are oversupplied. Purchase carefully.
hungry investors from auckland,buying up anything decent and turning it into a rental is the driver,plenty of building going on,even a rare event,seen a building site with a hoarding that said,skilled workers wanted.there is a lot of crime but then there are very few cops to catch them.i think the burglary clear up rate is about 7%,that was probably one guy they talked into admitting to a 100 other burglaries on the promise of a big breakfast.
Grew up in Whangarei and go back often to visit family. The town doesn't have much going for it, poor, crime ridden and soulless.
On my last visit, as I reached Whangarei, I was greeted by a number of chaps hanging out at two intersections on Hwy 1 with bottles of water and squeegee's offering to clean my windscreen. Not the best welcome to Northland for visiting tourists.
True delboy. The locals who have jobs are mostly on or close to the minimum wage.They can't compete with foreign and Auckland money to buy a house or buy land. The lucky ones can afford land because like myself they got out of dodge for 10 plus years and earn't money to purchase in their home turf.
The poverty gives Northland a wonderful flavor though. Once you step into the local rural economy you won't find a building permit anywhere. The improvisation and creativity to create dwellings is wonderful. The council turns a blind I as they know the locals don't have options and their owner built hippy shacks tend to be better quality than your leaky home fiascoes down in Aucks.
If you Aucklanders and foreigners join the stampede to by land in Northland please have the understanding and respect that we have our own subculture of resilience and creativity. Our perceived poverty is not lack of intelligence or laziness. We are a vibrant community of self reliant people who resent having to compete with your financial wealth to live within our local economy.
As for crime Northland does have a darkside. I tell my kids nothing good happens in town after 10pm but I have never locked my house and don't even have a key.
Further to my previous comment I have to admit there is a minority of locals who think the beach baches are fair game for some Koha. To put it in perspective however I would point out that the Koha gatherers watch the beach bach community turn up every summer in there shiny land cruisers towing their shiny boats. The beach bach community then buzz up and down the coast in a frenzy of kaimoana pillaging cleaning out the mussels, dredging up the scolaps etc that the locals were leaving to grow bigger.
so yeah, we aren't all peace and harmony in paradise and my hardcore locals haven't experienced ethnic plunderers yet, they are in for a shock as even pakeha Aucklanders have morality as to what resources can be harvested.
I lam a proud Northlander but like other contributors I left the area to get started financially and career wise and have now returned. We always intended returning to Auckland central for our kids education, found good schools and have remained nearly twenty years. Its true - corporate jobs are few and far between but there are supportive local council initiatives for those who want to be self employed. Like Auckland there are beautiful places and areas best avoided at night. Upmarket b&t lifestyle properties on our road have gone from $420ish to $650k to $700k in three years. And for this you get 10min to city, 4 bedrooms, nice outlook, a couple of paddocks,, room for for a horse, couple of sheep and a dog
The same raping of the foreshore happened at Piha about 25 years ago. Buses full of immigrants arrived with spades and sacks and proceeded to strip the tiny mussels from the rocks. No doubt boiled up for soup when back home. Tasty for them at the time
but now gone forever from Piha...
Many years back my kids & I witnessed packs of new arrivals at Shakespeare park whangaparoa with 10litre buckets of small shellfish filled to the top & as it was a public holiday there was a MAF officer enforcing the law. Sadly nobody could speak a word of English.
This is not racism this is the reality. I remember also seeing the same thing at Eastern beach out Howick way also many years ago. It's like the NZ govt chose to ignore the negatives & take the $$. Auckland is nothing like what it was and never will be.
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