‘The Block’ results show market slowdown | CoreLogic

Sunday’s ‘The Block’ auction results provided a proof point of the slowdown in the Auckland property market, with three of the four couples failing to make any money from the 12 week renovation challenge. Taking a deeper look into the suburb of Kingsland (where ‘The Firehouse’ was located) it has experienced a market decline 3.5% over the past twelve months, performing worse than the total Auckland market which declined 2.3%. The median value of a home is $1.1M, while interestingly, only 4.2% of properties within Kingsland sold in the past 12 months, versus Auckland at 4.3% and NZ at 6.5%.

With much less fanfare than The Block, the recently released CoreLogic QV House Price Index indicated a ‘business as usual’, with national property prices rising a further 0.2%, lifting the national index to 2.3%. As demonstrated by last night’s auction, Auckland remains quiet with buyers and sellers providing no urgency to agree a sale price while regional New Zealand is still experiencing double digit growth for the year.

Finally, the KiwiSaver ‘rejig’ from building houses to helping people into homes aligns to many industry conversations I have been involved with in recent months. While the focus will always be on KiwiBuild, I look forward to seeing the progress of many private enterprise initiatives focused on this problem coming to the market in the near future. While property values go up and down, there is always something exciting happening in the property industry.

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The national housing market remained firm in August, following on from the steady July result. According to the CoreLogic QV House Price Index, average property values rose by 0.2% from July to August, lifting the annual growth rate a touch from 2.2% to 2.3%. A good way to characterise the August figures is, ‘business as usual’, and with sales activity still subdued (albeit showing slightly more encouraging signs of a pick-up) and affordability stretched, a solid but unspectacular result for values is no surprise. Read Now