The median sale price for property in St Heliers, Glendowie, Kohimarama, Mission Bay, and Orakei was 7% higher in January-February 2011 than the same period in 2010. This means buyers would have to save an extra $52,000 over the previous 12 months to be in the same place they were in last year. Fine if buyers earn big money. Not so good for the average buyer who seeks to live in The Bays. Want to know how much your house is worth without seeing a real estate agent?....Free Online Property Appraisal....Make sure you see this one.
To place this price growth into perspective, buyers who purchase property today will pay approximately $75 more per week in mortgage repayments compared to buyers who purchased property a year ago ( mortgage 5.7% floating rate).
Moreover, extrapolating the median sale price from now to January-February 2012, (assuming a continued 7% growth) would yield the following result: median price $824,000, weekly mortgage $1189. This means buyers next year will pay $78 more per week in mortgage repayments than today's buyers, and $153 more per week than buyers last year.
However, in spite of the increased median sale price, property prices will not rocket away any time soon. Consumers are still reducing debt and facing increasing living costs in the form of accommodation, fuel , food, utilities and so forth. Nevertheless, statistics indicate property prices have bottomed out in The Bays and are slowly marching upwards. Ever wondered how much a property sold for in your area of interest? Now you can see for free. Sales Statistics....Be sure to have a read.
Quite apart from statistical evidence, it is generally accepted the growing shortage of property must also force prices higher. This has been brought into sharp relief recently with rental increases. The temperature is now about to go up as the summit for Auckland's future announced Auckland will need to house an extra one million people within the next 30 years. Add to this the numbers of people heading our way to escape the carnage of Christchurch and perhaps Japan. So the question is, given that construction is falling behind and supplying houses is not cheap, where do you see house prices going?
As an aside, if you are curious about what the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have to say about NZ's economy, take look at their website here
