April Property Price Index

Trade Me’s Property Price Index for April put Ōtautahi apartments back in the spotlight as the whare which is increasing in value amongst the property slump.

The average asking price of the Garden City’s apartments increased exponentially by $101,050 over the past year, to $748,700 (by 16 per cent), illustrating Christchurch’s urban life is once again open for business, Mr Lloyd said.

“Ōtautahi is in a different position to the rest of the country. It’s now seeing people and properties flow back into the city post the earthquake rebuild, and in the past decade Kiwi have changed the way they live, which is seeing increased popularity in apartments,” Mr Lloyd said.

The South Island city’s average asking price for apartments beat out its cosmopolitan counterparts. The standard asking price for an apartment in Auckland city is $694,950 (down 13 per cent year-on-year), and Wellington’s apartments are going for $688,650 (down 4 per cent).

“If you go back ten or twenty years, people would say, don’t buy an apartment, you can’t make capital on it. But we are seeing with the changes to our lives, the urbanisation or the cosmopolitan way we like to live, this is not the case anymore. It is a legitimate contender if you buy wisely,” Mr Lloyd says.

Cyclone Gabrielle seems to have made its mark on the Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay markets with supply, demand and prices all sliding in a downwards trajectory, Mr Lloyd said.

“We knew the two regions' property markets were going to be affected with the amount of destruction the weather event left in its wake, and we are starting to see it play out,” Mr Lloyd said.

The average asking price for Hawke’s Bay property fell $77,500 from April 2022 to $758,500 from , while Gisborne’s houses slid down by $29,900 to $657,850.

We saw the same pattern happening with supply and demand onsite, Mr Lloyd said.

“Hawke’s Bay plunged 10 per cent in supply, and six per cent in demand. While Gisborne is one of our smallest markets with just 125 listings currently onsite, last month we saw a significant drop in supply of 26 per cent and demand down by 28 per cent.”

The average asking price in Aotearoa fell $106,000 over the past year.

Across the motu, the average asking price for a house was $862,650, an 11 per cent decrease from April 2022, Trade Me Property Sales Director Gavin Lloyd said.

“In last year’s red hot market, we were close to a million dollar average asking price for the whare. However, I think it’s important to give homeowners some perspective that the market isn’t in free-fall, it’s just a market correction.

“What the latest figures show us is that the typical price being asked in New Zealand for a house is up by $167,000 from just over three years ago when the pandemic started, that’s nothing to sniff at.”