The best time to buy and sell a bach

Do you ever catch yourself spending time on the beach this holiday and thinking: ‘would be nice to live here’?

Turns out lot of people do.

Tauranga Bayleys agent Carmen Dickinson says the best time to buy a bach is during the summer, with the number of listings in the holiday hot spot peaking around New Year, she says.

“A lot of people are coming here around Christmas and New Year, so it’s all about eyes on the property. And because everyone is on holiday and relaxed, they are looking at the property pages,” Dickinson says.

She adds that makes it the best time to sell a bach also the best time to buy, as there are more options available on the market.

However, sometimes, it is worth taking a risk and sell a property during wintertime when there is less stock available, so less competition.

“If you put a home on the market in July it works out for a lot of people because there’s not a lot of stock available.”

Raglan Ray White agent Julie Hanna says the Waikato surfing town gets flooded with visitors in the summer, particularly January, making it a good opportunity to sell.

“The sun brings people in and Raglan shows itself off with lovely beaches. Generally, it’s scattered from Waikato, some Aucklanders and people from Cambridge,” Hanna says.

However, the longer you wait for a suitable property, the higher are the chances of missing out on a bargain.

“We are quite short of listings and when they are coming on, they are going very quickly. I think that they are only going to go up in value,” she adds.

Mangawhai property agent Christine Birss, of Bayleys, says the beach town is so popular amongst Auckland buyers the property market is hot from October all the way to April.

Summer is the best time to sell, which Birss proved by selling five properties this December including one on New Year’s Eve .

But she says each-goers still visit Mangawhai up until early autumn which extends the prime selling time.

“When people are ready to sell for all sorts of reasons they don’t want to wait. If someone talked to me in the month of August, I’d say ‘wait until October’ but it’s more about when they are ready.”

Winter was a tough time to sell, however days when beach towns were only popular during summer are long gone, Birss says.

“Once upon a time the shops used to close on Friday 5pm and not open until Monday morning and same with beach towns, they’d be empty in the winter. But because we are so close to Auckland, people are comfortable enough to come on a stormy winter weekend, not just a summer day.”

In the popular Coromandel spots of Whangamata and Pauanui, First National Real Estate owner Gordon Turner says that the hottest part of the market is spring, early September to December. While peak summer visitors are clicking away on the real estate sites, he says that buying doesn’t re-start until mid-January to April. And holiday tyre-kickers are a thing of the past, Turner says, with lookers being serious buyers now.

Average time to sell in summer drops to only five weeks from winter’s 87 days, but Turner says the really in-demand properties, within one or two blocks of the beach at around the $800,000 mark, can sell in less than a month.

And for beach front properties, there is massive un-met demand. Two sold in December, one a 1970s do-up achieved $3.7 million, another near new Hamptons-style was asking around $5 mill (confidentiality agreements prevent the price being made public).

“Buyers come out of nowhere when we have waterfront,” Turner says. “The money is out there, even when we list at $2 to $2.5million. A $5 million property in Pauanui had four buyers.”

Closer to Auckland city, Ray White Waiheke agent Harry Howe says that sales are constant on the holiday island, but peak from September to December and re-start late January through to May.

He’s seen an uptick this summer on the back of low interest rates and certainty in the market now that rules around capital gains, bright line test and rental regulations are settled.

“The sweet spot is $1million to $1.5 million properties, there are not nearly as many of the big trophy $3 million plus properties. Here there are not many new build properties coming to the market – only one or two, compared to hundreds in the city – so they stay with owners.”

Bayleys agent Paul Elsden, who joined the Omaha office when it first opened at the end of 2008, says that he always tells vendors that there is never a bad time to list in the north Auckland town.

“There were 68 sales in Omaha in 2019, and actually June, July and August were the busiest months, when 24 properties sold. April and December were the lowest with one and two sales.”

He says 2019 sale volumes and average prices to early December were up on the last two years but listings are nowhere near the 70 to 80 properties for sale in Omaha in 2009 – 2012. In the past three years, he’s observed only 25 to 30 listings in Omaha at any one time.

Elsden notes that stock levels have been low for the past five or six years, and buyer demand remains strong, so there are already February listings already in the pipeline.

“Vendors have one last Christmas and then list after their holidays, while buyers come back in February, March and April all hyped up after a good holiday. With a good campaign and auction, properties are selling in 36 days compared to the average of 70 days.”

And how fast should buyers move? Elsden laughs that he has a couple of buyers who looked for nine years before they took the plunge, knows to never dismiss summer lookers doing their homework who will eventually become buyers.