The slowdown in Auckland's property market is hitting the city's wealthiest home owners the hardest, new data shows.
Figures from property analysts CoreLogic show that in the past three months homes with CVs higher than $1 million have typically been selling for prices 1-to-4 per cent below their CV.
Mid-priced homes with CVs between $800,000-and-$1m, meanwhile, have been holding their value and typically selling for prices close to their council value.
But the best performing properties have been those with CVs below $650,000, which are still selling for prices as high as 9 per cent above their CV.
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This showed that the more expensive the property, the more likely it was to sell at a lower price compared to its CV, CoreLogic head of research Nick Goodall said.
CVs are used by Auckland Council to estimate the "capital value" of every property in the city - with the latest valuations completed in July last year.
During Auckland's boom years, house prices rose so fast that homes typically sold for values well above their last council valuation.
However, the CoreLogic data suggested that while owners were having a harder time selling expensive properties in a flatter market, buyers were getting more chances to snap up bargains.
In one sale this week, an Epsom home in the Auckland Grammar and Epsom Girls' Grammar zone sold for $400,000 less than its stated value.
Of 14 homes OneRoof saw auctioned this week, three sold for prices under their CV, while another six were passed in because the bids did not rise as high as the CV.
However, another five properties - three with council values higher than $1m and two with values below $650,000 - sold for prices higher than their CV.
This included a Freemans Bay apartment in the Hopetoun Residence complex, which sold for $1.715m or about $300,000 above its CV.
The price was driven up by tough competition between three bidders.
Jill Findley was one of the unsuccessful bidders and thought the apartment was worth the price.
She lives in the complex next door and had been bidding on behalf of a friend's family member living in the US, who wanted to move back to New Zealand and into the Hopetoun Residence apartment with its spectacular harbour views.
They ended up bidding $65,000 higher than their pre-auction limit, but still missed out on the apartment.
Findley said homes had to make their buyers fall in love with them in the current market if they were to sell for prices above CV.
"There was nothing [in the early part of the auction] that was worth falling in love with except that [Freemans Bay] apartment," she said.
Another home at 2 Greenfield Rd in Epsom also sold almost $100,000 above its CV when it went for $1.425m.
A young first-home buying couple, who did not wish to be named, missed out after pulling out of the bidding war when the price reached the home's CV.
"It was a really nice property – but it surprised us that it was so far over CV, whereas quite a lot of the other ones were selling under," they said.
They said they expected to be able to buy a home under CV in the current market.
Barfoot & Thompson director Peter Thompson said CVs should be used as one indicator of a home's value, but shouldn't be relied upon as the only indicator.
"[A home's] CV was set at a certain date and that could either be one week ago or, in some cases, it could be up to three years ago," he said.
OneRoof editor Owen Vaughan agreed. "When tracking suburb values, we sometimes get fixated on whether a property has sold above or below CV," he said.
"They are a benchmark, but they are also only representative of value at the point they were taken. During the recent property market boom in Auckland, properties sold well over their CV, making the numbers look ridiculously out of date as well as giving the impression that buyers were paying well over the odds for a property.
"Now that the Auckland market has slowed, those high value suburbs that saw huge rises above CV during the boom are sometimes seeing sales below CV - often as a result of a percentage point fall in the market.
"But equally, marginal rises can result in an extra hundred thousand dollars on the value of homes in those suburbs."
Ray White Mission Bay chief executive and auctioneer on television show <i>The Block</i>, Wayne Maguire, said CVs were a "poor indicator" of current prices.
"Probably only [Auckland Mayor] Phil Goff believes those CVs, nobody else does," he said.
