Real estate agents in New Zealand’s wealthiest beach town, Omaha, are confident of a hot summer for the housing market and expect buyers and sellers to pile in after the election is settled.
Top agents told OneRoof that most of their gun-shy vendors have been sitting on the sidelines, some as long as 18 months, but pressure was building.
New figures from the OneRoof-Valocity House Index show Omaha’s average property value grew 4.85% ($128,000) in the last three months to $2.808 million – just 1.2% ($34,000) shy of its peak value recorded at the end of 2021.
Precision Real Estate agent Di Balich said that while Omaha’s market had been quieter than usual during the downturn, prices hadn’t dropped like they had in other parts of the country.
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“I don’t believe prices have contracted at all. But people were afraid of making a decision out of fear of the economy retracting,” she said.
“There’s no evidence that prices had gone backwards. There was just a fear of putting properties on the market..”
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But while there was a pause at the top end of town, lower-priced properties were trading as normal.
Balich said that nine Omaha properties had sold in the last three-and-a-half months of winter, adding that good homes were snapped up quite quickly.
Buyers, she said, were clustered at entry-level price points – which in Omaha means around $1.8m – but she noted there were some looking with budgets of $7.5m and more and that high-value homes were selling, some without coming to market.
In 2022 and 2023, Omaha has seen just 11 settled sales for more than $5m. The town record was set in March 2022 at $9.1m. So far this year the top sale price is $6.65m for a property on Lagoon Way.
A two-bedroom bach at 49 Blue Bell Parade, Omaha, had four bidders at auction driving the price over $2m.
Balich said she sold a property on Mangatawhiri Road in April for $3.3m. “It was only on the market five days. That price is absolutely what it would have sold for 18 months ago,” she said.
“A month ago, we sold a home on Omaha Drive for $1.8m, that was $500,000 over CV, and this week did an off-market sale for a very nice home on 5000sqm on Omaha Flats Road for $3.25m.”
Balich said the buyers for that property had been looking unsuccessfully in Omaha for almost a year before deciding that a waterfront lifestyle spread with a swimming pool, plenty of storage for a camper van and room for the grandkids ticked all the boxes.
“They’d been closely watching the market, talking to me and understood the changing demographic.”
Balich said that she would have four listings going live just before the election, with vendors hoping to be the first to catch the post-election surge. She said two properties would be looking for over $4m with another beachfront one expecting around $6.5m. She also has a rare beachfront section that would likely fetch mid-$4m.
Some homeowners who had bought under the five-year bright-line rule would also be ready to sell. “They want to do the Omaha shuffle, so they’re holding back [for a National government] to change the rules,” she said.
The top price in Omaha this year was for a beachfront house on Lagoon Way that sold for $6.65m. Photo / Supplied
“The average beachfront offering is over $7m. I still think Omaha has got significant growth in the next three or four months,” Balich said, adding that she had five buyers with budgets of over $7.5m waiting for new properties to hit the market.
“They know exactly what they want and will pay that money for the right place. Some want a permanent home, so need proper storage, a scullery, not just summer holiday accommodation. Privacy is really important, they don’t want to be compromised.”
She is currently selling a four-bedroom luxury home on 141 Omaha Drive which has a CV $2.675m. Importantly the early 2000 house was redesigned two year ago, which Balich said gives it new appeal – it includes a butler’s pantry, two bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms, a gym, media room and office/wine cellar.
Ray White agent Heather Walton said that she was still assessing properties using 2021 prices.
A four-bedroom luxury home on the market on 141 Omaha Drive was completely redesigned in 2021 to meet the modern standards buyers demand. Photo / Supplied
“We’ve had a lot of owners we did appraisals for a year ago now asking us to come back,” she said.
“We’re saying the prices are similar to what we’d have said in 2021 and 2022, a lot of these properties are over $5m.”
Like Balich, Walton sees some buyers gravitating to lifestyle properties in the area like the luxury four-bedroom home on a waterfront 1.24ha site at 24 Waimanu Place, Point Wells, that she is marketing with Barfoot & Thompson’s James Doole.
Some Omaha buyers are gravitating to lifestyle properties on the perimeter, such as this four-bedroom home on 24 Waimanu Place, Point Wells. Photo / Supplied
“We got those wonderful prices and we don’t want to go backwards. There are some places worth over $12m if they ever came to market,” she said.
Bayleys agents Victoria Turner said that while there were healthy stock levels, there was a general feeling of getting through the election before the spring market kicked off.
She said that although a classic two-bedroom 1980s bach at 59 Blue Bell Parade passed in auction last week at $2.05m, the four bidders competing for the place was the sign of a healthy market. The property has a CV of $1.7m and sold seven years ago for $900,000 records show.
“It will be sold. There’s good activity in Omaha, it’s really stable and recovering well,” Turner said.
“Buyers are a mix of new people to Omaha and people who have been looking on and off, they’re looking at all coastal and beach places. But for Omaha, the new motorway is a game changer and this weather sure helps.”
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