Looking at overall house price trends only gives you part of the picture, as a recent report by Bayleys Research on the Auckland housing market makes plain.
Divvying up the Auckland market by price gives a number of sub-markets that Bayleys Research says have quite different characteristics and have shown different trends in the past year. To give you some idea of the shape of New Zealand's largest regional residential market, only ten per cent of sales are under $150,000. Around 65 per cent are from $150,000 and $350,000 and the remaining quarter are over $350,000.
That means trends in that middle price range are clearly going to have the most impact on median figures, although other parts of the market can be behaving quite differently.
Bayleys Research says the lower end of the residential market has been hardest hit by lower sales volumes. However, forecast economic improvement and peaking mortgage rates should help demand and prices improve from mid next year.
By contrast, the median price for the top 15 per cent of the market has kept increasing over the past three years in spite of periods of falling demand in 1998 and currently.
"The overall housing market is influenced by general economic trends associated with interest rates, security of employment, salary and wage growth and consumer confidence... Upper end purchases are related more to business confidence."
Sales over $1 million are now relatively commonplace, with 86 properties reaching above this in the April quarter compared with 42 the previous quarter. The median house price for this part of the market is currently around $525,000.
Looking at the Auckland market by property type gives you another viewpoint, with the apartment market picked as one area to watch carefully. A recent New Zealand Herald article titled Metro Meltdown cites softening prices and a slowdown in sales of inner city apartments.
Bayleys Research says that owner-occupiers are now the majority of buyers for central city apartments, a turnaround from a few years ago when this market was largely driven by investor demand.
In surveying recent purchasers of more than 110 apartments and terrace houses, Bayleys Research found a wide spread of age groups: about a third were in their 20s, 46 per cent were people in their 30s and 40s and so nearly a quarter were in their 50s and older.
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