Auckland median house sale price rises 12% in March, as volumes fall: Barfoot

Tuesday 5th April 2016

The median sale price for a house in Auckland rose 12 percent last month from a year earlier, edging back toward its December record while both sales volumes and new listings fell, says Barfoot & Thompson, the city's largest realtor.

The median price rose to $798,000 from $711,000 in March 2015 and was up 8.1 percent from February, Barfoot said. That's within $2,000 of the record price set in December. The firm had 1,341 sales last month, down 16 percent from a year earlier while new listings were 6.2 percent lower at 1,874.

Residential building permits for Auckland jumped 49 percent in February from a year earlier, for an annual 9,534, which is below the 13,000 the city is estimated to need to match population growth.

“As it has been for the past two years, lack of supply remains the main price driver," managing director Peter Thompson said in a statement. "Although a record number of building permits are being issued, and new homes are springing up everywhere, Auckland is simply not building homes fast enough to keep up with the growing population."

He said that government figures show the population of Auckland rose by 3,000 in February and that based on an average occupancy of three people to a house, that implied monthly demand would rise by 1,000 properties on that basis alone.

Surging house prices in Auckland may be driving another metric at Barfoot, which said there were 474 sales for more than $1 million, the highest number ever for a single month. Properties sold for less than $500,000 rose about 11 percent to 146.

“March is always one of the busiest sales months of the year, and a good indicator of where prices are tracking for the remainder of the year,” Thompson said.

(BusinessDesk)

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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