Sales and average selling prices at Auckland's largest real estate agency both took a sharp dip in September.
Barfoot & Thompson recorded 666 unconditional sales in September, down from 1020 in August (-35%) and down from 1099 (-40%) in September 2020.
The average selling price was $1,132,552 in September, down $49,044 from $1,181,596 in August.
It was the second month in a row that Barfoot's average selling price has declined and means it's now down by $51,050 since it peaked at $1,183,602 in July.
The median selling price was $1,100,000 in September, down by $30,000 from its August peak.
However the total number of homes the agency had available for sale increased from 2601 in August to 2727 in September.
The decline in sales numbers was expected given that Auckland was in lockdown during September, which prevented normal marketing activity such as professional photography, in person viewings and open homes.
Although September's sales were down 40% versus September last year, they were only down 14% compared to September 2019 and were just above the 659 sales achieved in September 2017, although the September 2017 figures were affected by that year's General Election.
The decline in prices was more of a surprise.
"The restrictions and restraints on open homes and viewings had a major impact on sales volumes and trading patterns, and these in turn resulted in both the median and average sales prices edging lower," Barfoot & Thompson Managing Director Peter Thompson said.
"The average and median price declines had more to do with apartment sales and the price categories in which sales occurred, than buyer resistance to market prices," he said.
Thompson said the Auckland lockdowns were also having a negative impact on the incomes of people working in the real estate industry.
"The lockdown is having a major impact on the livelihoods of those involved in the real estate profession, including those that provide support services such as photography, video, staging, valuations and building reports," he said.
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112 Comments
Good. Hopefully it continues to drop.
Wonder if it's the interest rate increases starting to have an effect.
Interest rates have barely moved so…. no? Can’t be because of the national lockdown in the middle of winter, surely.
Coming from such a low base even the small increases that have happened so far are fairly large percentage increases. I'm on mobile at the moment so cant find the figures right now but IIRC a couple of the changes in the past month were double digit increases in a single day. Neither of us can say for certain that these changes are or aren't having an effect.
Prices didn't drop last year during lockdown or during winter did they?
A market dip is a good time to buy...... adopting a "counter-cyclical" strategy.
Astute investors will be poised ready to pounce.
TTP
What about astute renters like yourself Tim?
(ps I see that you're back to modifying your posts 3hrs+ after your initial post...who are you trying to confuse?)
Hi Independent_Observer,
I urge you to learn from my mistakes......
TTP )-;
We will all endeavour not to engage in price fixing.
Hi Brock,
Since when have tenants/renters engaged in price fixing?
TTP
I think he was referring to company directors engaging in price fixing. wink wink...
I think the NZ legal system have already been addressing those 'mistakes' haven't they Tim?
The highlight of the day for Ind observer is responding to TTP as 'Tim'. Cute but very childish
house price to double again while the 165,000 fresh immigrants join the ....
EDIT:
house price to double again while the 165,000 immigrants with the fresh rights to buy their own houses join the ....
The immigrants aren't fresh. They've been here the whole time and are presumably already living in houses.
They aren't fresh, they have been here for a while.
And most of them won't be able to afford to buy.
Some won't be able to afford to buy.
Some has enough to buy, but couldn't because they couldn't buy an exsiting house as a foreigner
Some weren't sure they could live here after their work visa expires and putting it off the buying decsion.
Some were happy to live in rent houses.
All are at some stage looking to buy a house as rent will become extremely high, and house price just keeps rising.
Good luck buying an average priced house on the average incomes most of these people are on.
Yes of course some will be able to, but it will be a minority.
Yes but the tiny minority, as with the rest of the population, proves beyond any doubt the majority are lazy avocado sucking plums.
Why do people keep insisting that their first house should be "average priced". If you are trying to buy an average house as your first of course you'll have issues affording it.
He could equally have said, 'try buying a lower quintile house on the income these people are on', and it would be just as true.
There is extraordinary price compression in the NZ market. Houses that are unfit for human habitation cost an arm and a leg. Houses unfit for human habitation located in areas of high crime and grinding poverty are unaffordable for middle-class workers.
Would it? on minimum wage you should be able to save for a deposit on a $700,000 house in 6-7 years.
A single minimum wage would not even make rent affordable. You need multiple minimum wages just to afford rent. Then to save anything above rent, power, water, food, and necessary web services like banking you would need far more minimum wages to even start saving towards a deposit. Protip by the time they save even 1-2 years later the price increases and increase in deposit required will have already outstripped how much they saved. Hence the problem with most the first home hopefuls in the country trying to save for a deposit.
I Agree... Back in the day we bought a very modest house and over many years tidied it and sold it to move up the ladder.
A lot of younger first home buyers seem to want and expect what they can't afford.
Back in my day we brought a cardboard box with a tarp over it and then got the children to bucket out the water everytime it rained. The second home had plaster cladding. Today those children have been severely disabled by lung and heart failures from long term illnesses and so cannot afford even the original box and tarp. True story for many NZ families. Just in case you forgot where your silver spoon was put (where the sun does not shine).
Don't worry, if the rent is extremely high, so is inflation, interest rate will keep going up too. Houses will become extremely unaffordable. It's not sustainable.
So where have those 165000 'fresh' immigrants been living for the past few years?
Probably in rentals as they haven't wanted to buy when there is no certainty that they can stay?
That's my point. There won't be a sudden surge in demand when these people get the right to buy. Apart from many of them probably not having enough for a deposit, they also won't generate additional demand as they've already been living in someone's house.
If I live in a flat with other people and then go and buy my flatmates stay in the rental and I buy a house...
Do you really think people who have been here for just a year or two (many of them from third world countries) can afford to pay the deposit on a house on their own? Come on...
Sorry, I must have missed the bit where all 165,000 were refugees?
None of them came here with any money? None of them know how to save? All of them are on min wage or unemployed?
Whenever RBNZ is about to announce anything that seems to be not in favour of ponzi.......comes this type of news / data.......not surprised.
lol
No raise tomorrow?
The RBNZ were pretty adamant that house prices weren't their remit when they were skyrocketing.
Will be interesting to see if their moral integrity holds on the way down.
Will also be interesting to see if Grant Robertson still feels as strongly about not interfering with the central banks independence because he was fairly vocal about that at times.
This comment from the Reserve bank taken from a highlighted quote from Bernard Hickeys the Kaka this morning.
“We also outlined our working definition of sustainable house prices. We are in the process of refining a suite of metrics to indicate stretched prices. We will consider these metrics on a regular basis and will review financial policy settings accordingly, potentially adjusting settings to steer prices toward a more sustainable level.” The Reserve Bank commenting on house price sustainability in its Statement of Corporate of Intent for 2021-24
The recent LVR's for FHB's was suggested by Orr as a way to protect FHB's from a house price decline.
I am not sure however it feels like the RBNZ is ready to rein in house prices. How? I guess all will come out in time .
Buy in the dip...
Too early, if you are cashed up, I would suggest you to hold it for longer. This is just the beginning.
COH
Yes, March 2020 all over again. :)
Dip?
LOL. Wishful thinking. October stats will shock you all.
surely we should expect the average to drop when its composition has fewer Auckland properties?
Bang on
Barfoot only operates in Auckland and Northland. They make the odd sale on the Auckland/Waikato border as well but they are not a national agency.
Huh! I never noticed that.
No, B&T is pretty much Auckland only, I think they also do Northland, but nothing south of the Bombays, so this is basically an Auckland only set of stats being compared.
When Auckland sneezes the provinces catch a cold (better get tested btw)
B&T do sell in Tuakau, Onewhero and Pukekawa which are all Waikato. B&T agents tell purchasers that it is Auckland in order to drive up the prices!
I wonder if they keep using that auckland sell line when barfoot head further south to king country etc. Technically tuakau may be auckland, there is obviously a lot of gullible buyers
Waikato Council have offices in Tuakau and Tuakau residents pay rates to Waikato District and Regional Councils. Waikato/Auckland border is in Pukekohe.
Still a compositional effect as more and more new builds are hitting the market. These tend to be townhouses of small square metreage which is bound to drag the average down.
Yep, sure.
And these will slump next year, the compositional effect will be to push the median value upwards.
Author of Rich dad Poor Dad.
Interesting analysis of what reserve banks are doing and distorting the economy which will also have adverse social effect in times to come.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g-hkKZc_Ec
Talking about Biggest crash in October, inequality, reserve bank stupidity - printing money, people taking to street....
Lol - he has been saying a crash is imminent since 2011! Just last week I read an article specifically about all his incorrect predictions: https://ofdollarsanddata.com/the-broken-clock/
I think his original book was fantastic and helped a lot of people, but over the last decade he can only be described as a kook.
... a kooky mate of the uber kook of all , Donald Trump ...
Anyone's predictions (that goes for anyone on earth) of market crashes should be taken with a grain of salt. Even if backed up with empirical evidence.
Agree. He is also heavily invested in gold, so is always pushing it.
His promotion of the 'Micawber Principle" ( spend less than you earn) is of course brilliant. As was old Micawber.
Everything else he said was padding.
Wouldn't read anything into these results.
Lockdowns and the lack of sale influence these numbers heavily. Just wait for things to return to the status quo IF we ever get out of level 3..
Don't worry, public money is coming to the rescue again to keep prices high. The Govt's just announced a shared equity scheme run by Kāinga Ora, that'll take on the gap between a person's deposit and the 20% required by banks, to be paid off by the homeowner over time.
Yet another floor under extreme house prices that favours existing homeowners.
What is a Kainga Ora?
Google might be able to help you there
Yes its getting to the point where people start talking about organisations and I have no idea what they are referring to.
There seems to be a particularly braindead fad of switching languages mid-sentence in this country.
Typically indicates that the purpose of speaking was to virtue signal rather than communicate.
As opposed to the completely not-virtue-signalling approach of kicking up a big fuss whenever anyone dares to use a word of Māori. It's the agency name used in the article I linked.
Perhaps it should be like the National anthem where you do it in Maori first then, then do it in English.
Its usually only the second part that the old white folk know the words to.
Kainga Ora = gold kangaroo I think
It is an oxymoron. Their performance is often the opposite of their remit and most their budget would be better spent on maintaining sewage lines given what they deliver.
Link to an announcement?
Thanks.
This could be massive. If FHBs are comfortable with shared equity, and I don't know why they shouldn't be if they want a pathway in to ownership, then this could be really big.
And it changes my previous view on a slump in new house building in the coming year, based largely on the growing inability of FHBs to afford 2 bedroom townhouses...
BUT...watch for unintended consequences. This creates a new floor for new builds, what was 750K for a 2 beddie today might now rise to 800K plus...
I also wondered if the homes can only be ones built by community housing providers, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Here's some more info:
https://kaingaora.govt.nz/assets/Home-ownership/Brochures-and-forms/Fir…
Surprised at the lack of comments, this could be massive.
Hopefully the Interest team are putting an article together :)
Where's the comments? Don't worry, I'm not offended by the lack of any :) But just very surprised given the significance of today's policy announcement!
Working on one of these projects (donating land to housing charity) and trust me it will not be transformational. Barely a handful have successfully completed obtaining housing in a year nationwide. My project has been in the works for 5 and not a single build has started due to government delay. At best each limited housing developer in the region cherry picked by the government will have their own severe restrictions that most FHB would not be able to apply under. The new policy changes are still incredibly restrictive as they need people both severely poor, so most FHB could not apply, but able to afford a mortgage and buy out the remainder with a separate mortgage in a matter of years which actually also restricts those in poverty. The Goldilocks zone the government sets is very limited and the house builds are often inaccessible so it creates a very very limited success rate and then the time to development consent, time to build, time to complete build is many many years. Expect date for development completion hopefully within a decade but I am not holding my breath.
It'll be interesting how the equations roll out:
"The maximum contribution Kāinga Ora will make towards a home purchase
is 25% or $200,000 – whichever is lower."
https://kaingaora.govt.nz/assets/Home-ownership/Brochures-and-forms/Fir…
Good luck finding housing that is not a severe health hazard in the same city as work in that range.
The housing bubble is a socialised ponzi scheme on a massive scale.
...which Woods said had helped 53 families into homes since the launch of the programme last year. Woods said a further 113 families were “on the journey to home ownership”.
Doesn't exactly match the definition of "on a massive scale"
Lol - you're missing the big picture if you think that is the only socialised input that has resulted in exceptionally high prices.
Yeah and a central bank is a communist ideal. If we had a genuine free market then banking would be decentralised and the price of credit would float. Imagine if the market set the interest rate not some clown at the RBNZ.
The used house salesman will always find a way to put a positive spin on things.
I have a feeling there are some much tougher times ahead for New Zealand now that the gift from the Wuhan Institute of Virology has arrived.
Haven't you heard? Used houses are out, new builds are in =)
Nothing to see here, October will be the one to look at. September was a write-off due to the obvious.
Small drop in house prices: Ahhhh. Oh no! The end is neigh! Repent Repent!
You're joking but this is exactly the reaction I expect from RBNZ & Govt.
"The lockdown is having a major impact on the livelihoods of those involved in the real estate profession, including those that provide support services such as photography, video, staging, valuations and building reports," he said.
You can extrapolate that out well beyond that real estate industry.
How anyone can be bullish on the most inflated property market in the world and in an economy on home detention is beyond me.
hang in there FHB's...exit rush can't be far off now.
Not seeing this 'on the ground' at all... consistantly seeing insane record breaking prices paid
I agree anyone looking to buy and those at the coal face in Auckland will be very aware that prices have moved up a notch again and how much competition they are dealing with to secure a property.
Sold signs everywhere nothing staying on the market for long.
Have a walk around your local neighbourhood and see.
Such a temporary dip is utterly meaningless. The actual direction will only start to be visible a few months after interest rates have started raising, as this is the only lever that can be effectively used to deflate the housing Ponzi.
This is just a small drop. If inflation keeps increasing as I have said many times the only way to curb this is to raise interest rates or nzd will be worthless. As it’s is right now a couple on average wages cannot afford a 1.2 million dollar house that’s if they have the 220000 for deposit. If interest rates raise a modest amount say 2-3% the whole housing market will reduce to a place where people can buy without just living to pay mortgage. So many investors and speculators are just going to go down the pan.
The NZD will be made worthless. Housing is the scared cow above all else.
I do agree that the RBNZ would rather see the $NZD tank brutally than raise rates more than a token amount. I think the only fly in that ointment is that fuel prices are rising too... if we have a falling $NZ, and oil rising independently of that, our utterly petroleum-dependent economy will notice very quickly.
Interest rats are going to have to go WAY higher than 2 to 3%. The recent 30% house price increases have shielded investors. Anyone who has purchased a house or investment property years ago will hang on now for dear life. Interest rates will need to go back into double figures before any form of mass panic sets in and the chances of that happening are less than you winning Lotto.
Fact is average income earners buying first home cannot afford a 1.2 million dollar houses , who is going to buy until price comes down or wages lift 100% this is if interest rates stay low. The top of a market is when average citizens cannot afford to buy when this happens only one way market is going go is down
It's a lockdown effect, as we saw in the last 2020 lockdown with uncertainty surrounding an otherwise bubbling market.
No lockdown effect on sharemarkets this time round
A Question :
Is Jacinda helping FHB or Housing Ponzi ?
https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/126581320/government-launches-shared-hom…
Meaningless virtue signalling. At this rate they might as well be handing out million dollar cash prizes to randomly selected families:
...which Woods said had helped 53 families into homes since the launch of the programme last year. Woods said a further 113 families were “on the journey to home ownership”
But to be fair, I think that program was predicated on housing being delivered by community housing providers, who don't have much funding or capacity.
I think - someone please correct me if I am wrong - today's announcement enables FHBs to buy new housing built by developers, and off the plan.
Not really. It is like threading a needle through an atom of the FHB group. Most FHB need not apply (or rather cannot fit the Goldilocks range), followed by even more severely restrictive conditions and that is all before finding a place on the market where they can access work that they can actually acquire and afford the mortgage of...
Since Jacinda came to power house prices doubled. Who is better off, FHB or Ponzi riders? Hmm 🤔
This is going to create heck lot of social crisis which they will regret later. More people will be in debt, not just debt but bad debt. If one persons loses job, others will suffer together and lose their credit rating as missing out mortgage payment. It will be a disaster. She is definitely not helping FHB but housing ponzi, just to make sure their houses can be sold for higher price and keep this ponzi game running until it destroys everyone.
Don't worry at all Sheeple, the "good people" participating in the PPP will see to it that the "$$$" value NEVER goes down ......doesn't matter that the NZD loses value against other currencies and the general population is stuck with higher NZD prices for imports etc .....what an absolute mess !!!
I'm surprised that September's numbers aren't an outlier despite Auckland suffering a lock-down which should had caused a major dampening effect on sales- this illustrates the resilience of the residential property market.
Investors would be wise to seize the opportunity to position themselves for an upward price pressure due to pushed out demand in lieu of the lock-down. Coupled with a slowdown, Kāinga Ora buying, increasing public housing register and escalating building costs, the future of residential property investments remains bright and fruitful.
Be quick.
Oozing with real estate agency language, euphemisms and double speak.
Love it.
News from the Shenzhen housing market. 2nd-hand home sales tumbled 80% to 1,765 units in Sept (13.6% down over the month). First time to fall below 2,000 units mark in 12 years, according to local official data.
it will be very interesting to see if there's any blowback here from the cratering Chinese real estate market.
I think the consensus in the suburbs amounts to "she'll be right".
I just bought a house in central Wellington 200k below the spruiking websites estimates. Almost certainly the only bidder. I don't regret doing it because i need a home and wont be hurt by a falling market but, mmm yeah... patchy patchy...
Which website?
Going down big time now. Other Chinese companies defaulting and Xi wanting to bring down prices for the general population. New builds are the only game in town and as soon as landlords of existing property realise they will sell up for that sweet sweet 20 year tax haven. FHB prepare engines, we launch in July 2022.
Wobble, wobble
Pin, meet Bubble?
I believe we're in a bubble but this is not the pin, it's just uncertainty from the lockdown. The level 4 lockdown in 2020 had a similar hot market before that but slight falls during it.
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