The Auckland suburbs where house prices have risen the most in the last six months are a mixture of established favourites - Milford, Northcote, Kingsland, Grey Lynn and Ponsonby - and first home buyer hot spots on the fringe, such New Windsor, Pakuranga, Otahuhu, Opaheke in Papakura and Glen Eden.
James Wilson, valuation director at OneRoof's data partner, Valocity, says for suburbs on the southern fringe central, like New Windsor, and for others like Onehunga, One Tree Hill and Greenlane, there is a proliferation of first home buyers driving the market.
“And we’re talking about Auckland first home buyers here, so they’re playing in that bracket of $850,000 to $1.1 million. Within that price bracket it’s been crazy hot. That’s a direct result of groups of first home buyers who were already wanting to buy pre-Covid hitting, who have retained their jobs and they’re still really confident in the market, they’ve just dived in.”
Markets like Pakuranga, which is a wide suburb, has new pockets of residential building and infill development driving activity.
Start your property search
“People are taking larger sites and maybe relocating a house, or knocking down a house and building two, three, four, or sometimes more, townhouses," Wilson says.
“The council typically had quite restrictive subdivision controls in Pakuranga but the Unitary Plan changed that.”
In New Windsor, Mehul Mody of Harcourts, says prices are going up in part because the suburb, once a quarter acre paradise, has been classified as high density.
“People are paying more for the land. A lot of development is coming through.”
Investors are buying as well as first home buyers upgrading from small units to a bigger house with a wee bit of land.
“People are paying way above what we are appraising, especially for the land. Any parcel of land above 700sq m we are seeing people paying a lot of money out there. One of the sales which got a lot of attention was one on Richardson Road where 911sq m of land sold for $1.7 million, with a Government valuation of roughly $1.3million.”
The median average price in New Windsor is currently $1.065 million, up $145,000 in a year.
Mody says a four-bedroom house is fetching around $1m, a three-bedroom around $900,000 to $1m and a two-bed terrace house is selling for close to $700,000.
Over in Mairangi Bay and Castor Bay on the North Shore, it’s a different story, with Jonathan de Jong of Bayleys saying there just isn’t as much movement in these suburbs compared with north of Browns Bay and even out at Coatesville.
On the up: Auckland’s property market has survived two lockdowns. Photo / Fiona Goodall
“My thought is vendors are holding out, and in the last few weeks we’re seeing vendor expectations rise dramatically which is going to affect the turnover volumes.
“All this reporting in the media of ‘everything’s great, everything’s flying’ was absolutely correct but I think vendor expectation has now moved up along with what they’re hearing in the media and the buyers are getting to a place where they’ll say ‘no, we just won’t pay this.’”
Another reason for the dip in these suburbs is that there are many well-established families with good jobs who are not ready to move, or who don’t want to move unless they can find something else first.
“It’s a bit of a double barrel at the moment. Vendors may not want to move unless they can secure a place up front but then a lot of vendors are wanting their place to meet their needs moving forwards and that is never a good recipe, because a house is worth what the market’s prepared to pay for it, not what a vendor needs to move somewhere else.”
There are two types of vendors out there right now, de Jong says. One set has a genuine reason to sell but others are having a go in the hope of a big price.
“For instance, we had one two weeks ago, a plaster house, a development happening next door, where we thought the price would be about the $1.7 [million] mark. It got $1.83 million at auction [and] the vendors’ came back and said we’re not selling under $2 million plus your commission.
“We had 60 or 70 groups through, four or five buyers in the auction room, so I think there are definitely two types of transactions taking place at the moment.”
