Let’s look at some local property figures.
Canterbury is still one of the more affordable places to live in New Zealand, but that doesn’t mean it’s a slow or easy market! As many of our clients are in this region, we are very aware of how challenging the market is at the moment.
In March, 918 property sales were recorded in Otautahi Christchurch. That’s an increase of more than 50% on March last year! It’s also taking fewer days for properties to sell, an average of just 24 days on the market, down by 5 days on this time last year.
So there’s a lot going on in this very active and fast moving market – and what about the prices? The median house price in Canterbury is up 17.8% on March 2020, it has now cracked $600,000. A couple of years ago that would have seemed utterly crazy!
It is pretty incredible that Canterbury is sitting at about only half of Auckland’s median house price. According to a Demographia report, Auckland is the fourth least affordable city for housing among world cities (out of interest – Hong Kong is number 1, Vancouver is 2nd, Sydney 3rd). It’s an interesting one, are people willing to move out of that region if it means they can get onto the property ladder?!
While buying an investment property might be less appealing to some after the Government announcements regarding housing policy, it will be interesting to see what the numbers say in the next report from REINZ. Will there be an up tick in first home buyers, as suggested might be the case? Will we see a lot of properties coming onto the market as investors sell up?
If you are looking to buy a property being in a position to move fast is very useful. So, get a pre approval in place and talk to us about understanding the process of buying if you are new to the game. We have some good blog posts regarding various aspects of the property buying process, have a read.
Please get in touch if you would like to figure out where you stand in this market!
