Auckland's biggest real estate firm Barfoot & Thompson says its median house price for sales in June rose 3.5%, or NZ$20,000 to NZ$590,000 amid "unprecedented" demand for houses.
The rise has come on the back of an increasing shortage of available houses in the country's largest city.
B&T, which handles around 40% of all sales in the Auckland market says its available listings have slumped to an all-time low. This follows on from reports by Realestate.co.nz that nationwide listings are at historic lows.
The NZ$590,000 median price trumps the NZ$565,000 record Auckland median high reported in the May REINZ figures and suggests that the June REINZ figures probably out in about a week will show similar rises.
B&T's June average price reached NZ$649,945, an increase of more than NZ$5000 on the average price during May, but below the highest level on record, which was set in March.
Managing Director Peter Thompson said demand for properties was "unprecedented".
"...Competition is intense with homes selling within a tighter time frame than at any time in the last decade."
Thompson said that in June the firm listed only 1189 properties, while the sales for the month numbered 1059.
“This is the closest we have come to selling the same number of properties as we have listed in a month in the past 11 years.
“At the end of June we had only 2873 properties on our books, the first time our end of month listings have dipped below 3000 properties in the past 11 years.
The listings in June were some 29.5% lower than at the same time a year ago. The June figure was also 5.3% lower than the number of listings in May.
During June Barfoot & Thompson sold 380 homes for less than NZ$500,000, and a further 373 for between NZ$500,000 and NZ$750,000. A total of 144 homes sold for in excess of NZ$1 million, the same number as in May.
Property sales at 1059 for June was the fourth consecutive month that sales were in excess of 1000 for the month. The last time sales were this consistently high was nine years ago in the first half of 2004.
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