Spring is here and on cue more people are out and about looking at properties.

Agents are anecdotally reporting an increase in foot traffic at open homes - and in some Auckland suburbs a lot of those feet are first home buyers.

Lesley Harris, from the First Home Buyers Club, thinks the spring open home flurry is due more to buyers who have been waiting for a property crash now realising there isn’t going to be one.

“The market’s stable, you just have to get in.”

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Interest rates being at an all-time low are another factor in first home buyers getting out and looking, and Harris thinks they are also more realistic about what they can afford.

You may find them looking more in outer suburbs, she says, and more willing to check out smaller homes.

“People are making more compromises because they realise the market is the market. It’s not going to change; it’s not going to crash, so all the hype and talk that the market’s going to crash, well, I’m sorry, but there’s no data to support that.”

Preferred locations

Harris thinks the KiwiBuild reset of last week has also given first home buyers a strong message nothing is going to be handed to them - “there’s no Kiwi Build houses that are going to all of a sudden pop up in exactly the areas that people want.”

A recent survey conducted by the First Home Buyers Club asked members about their preferred locations to buy and found most wanted to be in central Auckland (38.85 per cent), followed by west Auckland (32.64 per cent), then south Auckland (30.34 per cent).

The North Shore (27.82 per cent) was fourth with east Auckland coming in last (22.30 per cent).

Kelvin Davidson, senior property economist with CoreLogic, confirms first home buyers are active.

In some parts of Auckland they are ahead of investors in terms of the biggest market share - though he points out the market share figures are in an already flat market. The suburbs where first home buyers have a larger share of the market are generally cheaper.

Harris says in a softened market first home buyers, who are cash buyers, are in a great position.

“They can actually get some really good bargains so it’s a fabulous time, I think, to be looking.”

Need for listings

For agents in Auckland life would be good - if only there were more listings.

While buyers are out there, listings are yet to dramatically improve.

Barfoot & Thompson managing director, Peter Thompson, says Barfoot has just launched a big campaign to get more listings and in the last week or two there are signs more activity is coming on the market, but he cautions this is nothing like the boom times of 2015 and 2016.

While buyers are looking at homes across the price spectrum, Thompson also says first home buyers are very much in the picture.

“It was pleasing to see a third of the sales we made last month were under $700,000 and a lot of those were mainly first home buyers.”

And while it is still a buyers’ market, the lack of listings in Auckland puts pressure on buyers.

“It’s a matter of if you (as a buyer) see something you’ve still got to make a relatively quick decision because there are buyers out there,” he says.

“If you really love something don’t lose it by waiting to see what else is on the market - sometimes you need to make that bold move.”

Motivating factors

Josephine Kinsella, managing director of LJ Hooker, says while listings are low in Auckland that’s not the case for the rest of the country.

“Provincially, the listing numbers are very high but so is the appetite to purchase because there’s some good investments out there.

“We’re seeing a lot of investors going to Dunedin, Oamaru, Timaru, and there’s good yields, the rents have risen.”

Kinsella thinks one of the reasons Auckland is suffering with so few listings is that sellers have a fear of not finding what they want to move to, creating a vicious cycle.

“Typically, what people do is they start to go ‘oh, I’ll have a look at open homes because I’m thinking about selling’ and they get their feelers out and sometimes when they see what’s available in the local market they think ‘actually, why am I moving?’”

But, she says, the low interest rates should be motivating both buyers and sellers.

“We wish we had rates like this before because this is almost every seller’s dream because buyers can actually access financing, providing they are set up correctly.”

It figures that if sellers aren’t listing, some buyers won’t be finding what they are looking for either.

Kinsella advises them to strike up an old-fashioned relationship with a good agent who can go through their database and even knock on doors to find them something which might suit.

“I think we might be going back to that sort of environment, provided buyers can learn to trust an agent to do that.”