With London's average house price dropping below the median sale price for central Auckland on the back of Brexit fears, OneRoof decided to look at how NZ's housing market compares to other "expensive" cities around the world.
For Kiwis, the chances of bagging a bargain are greatest in the UK capital, with the city's house prices dropping 4.4 per cent to £457,471 in the year to May, according to latest figures. That's NZ$845,305 - just above the median sale for all of Auckland NZ$830,000, but below the median for Auckland City (NZ$980,000), Auckland North Shore (NZ$1,035,000) and Rodney (NZ$945,000), and Queenstown (NZ$1,005,000).
Some London suburbs offer bigger bargains than others: Southwark, which is home to Borough Market and Tate Modern, is down 5.8 per cent to £475,319 (NZ$878,284); Barnet, on London's northern fringes, is down 9.6 per cent to £481,821 (NZ$890,299), and City of London is down 8.3 per cent) to £729,967 (NZ$1.34 million), which is still cheaper than the median price in 52 Kiwi suburbs.
The average house price in Hong Kong, the world’s most expensive city to buy a home, is NZ$1.77 million. Just nine Kiwi suburbs can lay claim to house prices above that level, but you get more house for your buck in those NZ suburbs. And, despite interest rates hikes, Hong Kong residential prices at the end of last year were 5.5 percent higher than the previous year.
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The average house price in Vancouver is NZ$1.2 million (cheaper than 85 Kiwi suburbs); in Sydney, Los Angeles and New York the average is around NZ$1 million (cheaper than 166 Kiwi suburbs); and in Paris the average is NZ$929,000 (cheaper than 216 Kiwi suburbs).
Like London, New York is a city of extraordinary price variation, even within the two top markets - Manhattan and Brooklyn. Prices at the top end of the market have cooled, and CBRE’s tracking of Zillow listings now shows 13 percent of listings have dropped their prices (that’s up from 8 percent last year).
In Brooklyn, the average cost of an apartment is NZ$1.18 million, making it second only to the city everyone dreams of when New York, Manhattan, where list price is a whopping NZ$2.92 million - eclipsing New Zealand's most expensive suburb by several hundred thousand dollars.
But there are relative bargains on the fringes of the five boroughs. Finder.com found nine places with median selling prices at NZ$1 million or below, including one in Manhattan, Murray Hill, with a median of NZ$1.01 million.
The median price in the heart of hipster Brooklyn, Williamsburg, has increased by 16 percent over the year to just under NZ$1.5 million. A bargain in South Williamsburg, according to Zillow, was asking just over NZ$1.02 million for a 51 square metre studio (but that comes with a NZ$650 monthly home owner fee), while the median sits at Auckland-level NZ$2.14 million. North Williamsburg's median asking price was NZ$2.58 million, the ‘bargain’ a slightly cheaper, NZ$1.01 million. Recent asking prices in the suburb have reached nearly NZ$9 million.
Even low-priced properties in expensive Manhattan are sitting on the market: a co-op studio on Lincoln Square that sold for NZ$669,000 had been on the market for 36 weeks; a roomy pre-war co-op on East 77th Street in the desirable Upper East Side eventually sold for NZ$1.67 million after 26 weeks. Zillow precincts Manhattan prices will fall almost six percent in the coming year.
Then there's Paris, where properties can sometimes sell within a day. Desirable suburbs –the arondissements closest to the city – have not only the ease of being close to everything, but also the elegance of the Haussmann-type buildings that say "Paris" like nothing else. A beautiful property on the Champs-Elysees would cost some NZ$26,500 per square metre, up five percent on last year. A mansion in the area sold for around NZ$26.2 million. At the more "affordable" scale, tiny 21 square metre and 25 square metre apartments (barely a pied a terre, more like a toe-hold) sold for between NZ$500,000 and NZ$522,000 near rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honore.
