PHOTO: How low can they go? RAWPIXEL
Property data company CoreLogic’s latest Housing Price Index shows prices dropped 0.3% in January – the tenth consecutive month of decline.
Across the year to January nationwide house prices have dropped 7.2% from $1.03m to $953,850. It’s the biggest 12-month decline in prices since the year to May 2009 (-7.9%) but hasn’t quite hit the -9.7% seen in March that year.
Core Logic NZ’s chief property economist Kelvin Davidson says the continual fall in prices isn’t surprising given the gloomy economic outlook for the year.
He says the spring optimism seen in the housing market had been tempered by the Reserve Bank warning of a looming recession to hit in 2023.
“Buyers in a comfortable borrowing position still hold the balance of power when it comes to price, and this has clearly driven a further leg down for values in January,” Davidson says.
The biggest fall in prices across the year was in the capital – with an 18.1% fall. That put the average value of a Wellington house under a million dollars at $928,349.
The average price of a home in Auckland city is still over a million, but it too has seen prices fall over the last year, down 8.2% to $1.35m from $1.47m in January 2022.
In Christchurch property prices have remained relatively steady across 2022, only down 1% to $743,659 from $751,170
Davidson says while the pace of decline has slowed in recent months, he says a fall of as much as 20% is not out of the question, with a floor on nationwide price drops not expected till the latter half of this year.
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