– Auckland house prices have dropped to their lowest in over four years, with a 2.8% quarterly fall.
– Meadowbank saw the largest decline, with property values down 7.1% to $1.56m.
– The declines have improved affordability, increasing the number of sub-$1 million suburbs in Auckland and Wellington.
Auckland house prices have dropped to their lowest point in more than four years, as economic uncertainty, buyer hesitation and falling RVs cast a pall over the city’s housing market over winter.
Auckland’s average property value fell by almost 3% (-$36,000) to $1.26 million, a level last seen in January 2021, when prices in the city were on a quick march to a peak of $1.57m.
The 2.8% plunge was the largest quarterly drop to affect Auckland property values in over a year, driven by weaker activity in the city’s central and southern suburbs.
Normally seen as bulletproof, Meadowbank was the country’s worst-performing suburb. The average property value in the prestige neighbourhood bordering Remuera fell by 7.1% (-$120,000) to $1.56m – almost half a million dollars below its peak of $2.03m.
Also feeling the winter chill are house prices in Point England, Kingsland, Mount Albert, Te Atatu Peninsula and Northcote. The average property value in all six Auckland suburbs fell by more than 6% in the three months to the end of August.
Only 35 Auckland suburbs recorded quarterly value growth, with the biggest lifts in coastal areas popular with wealthy second-home-buyers: Omaha was up 4.1% to a new peak of $3.01m, while neighbouring Point Wells was up 3.5% to $2.54m. Homes in the beach towns are now $1m more expensive than they were five years ago.
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Just four regions managed to weather the winter slump. Property values in Taranaki, Tasman, Southland and Northland all rose over the quarter, but the lifts were modest, less than 1%.
The nationwide average property value slipped 1.2% in the three months to the end of August to $957,000, exactly where it was a year ago and two years ago.
Wellington Region’s average property value has been falling since March 2024 and is only 7.4% ($58,000) above its level five years ago. Wellington City is in a worse state; its average property value is only 1.5% above where it was five years ago.
Wellington’s house prices are almost 30% below peak levels. Photo / Getty Images
Homes bought at the height of the market in the capital are worth almost 30% ($395,000) less, a huge equity hit from which homeowners are unlikely to recover before 2030.
Tauranga is the only major metro to enjoy house price growth over the quarter, but the fact that growth was less than 1% ($9000) highlights the extent of the market freeze, even against a background of mortgage rate cuts.
Property values in Christchurch and Queenstown-Lakes dipped by 0.1% (-$1000) and 0.3% (-$7000) respectively over the quarter. House prices in both locations have been supported by decent levels of buyer activity over the winter, with REINZ data showing combined sales for June and July in Christchurch and Queenstown up over 25% annually.
Homeowners in Dunedin and Hamilton, however, felt the chill over the quarter, with the average property value in both dropping by 1.3% (-$9000) and 2.1% (-$17,000), respectively.
In Hamilton, just one suburb, Hamilton Lake, recorded value growth, while the biggest drops in the city were in Hamilton Central (-6.3%), Hamilton East (-5.7%), and Whitiora (-5.1%).
In Dunedin, five suburbs – Andersons Bay, Musselburgh, Helensburgh, North Dunedin, and Dunedin Central – managed to avoid the slump.
Of the 917 suburbs nationwide with 20 or more settled sales in the last 12 months, 274 recorded value growth over the quarter, and 465 were up year-on-year.
The biggest quarterly increases at the end of August were in the Far North suburbs of Kaitaia (+7.8%), Kawakawa (+6.4%), Karikari (+5.1%), Peninsula (+5.1%), and Coopers Beach (+5%). All five have an average property value of less than $1m, with Kaitaia and Kawakawa two of Northland’s cheapest areas for houses (their average property value is $482,000 and $516,000, respectively).
Kaitaia, in Northland, recorded the biggest price bump over winter, with the town’s average property value rising by 7.8% to $482,000. Photo / Denise Piper
Omaha and Point Wells, at the upper end of the market, enjoyed the biggest increases in the 12 months to the end of August, with respective bumps of 12.3% and 11.6% adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to the value of homes in both suburbs.
Also enjoying annual value growth of over 10% were homes in Moana. While the suburb’s average property value of $800,000 is less than a third of Omaha’s, the suburb itself is West Coast’s most expensive for property.
Auckland, Hamilton, and Wellington dominated the list of falling suburbs, both over the quarter and in the last 12 months. While Auckland topped the list for the quarter, the steepest annual declines were in Wellington Central (-13.3%) and Peacocke, in Hamilton (-10%).
The latest declines have improved affordability for first-time buyers in all three cities. In Auckland, the number of suburbs with an average property value of less than $1m has jumped from 15 during market peak to 52 now, while Wellington’s sub-$1m club has grown from two to 31 over the same period.
Million-dollar suburbs don’t loom as large in the Hamilton market as much as they do in Auckland and Wellington, but from market peak, they have fallen in number from 12 to just three.