Wellington's red-hot house prices are finally cooling ... why, then, is no-one buying? - Property News AU/NZ | propertynoise.co.nz & propertynoise.com.au

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PHOTO: MONIQUE FORD/STUFF Beth Coughlan and her family are trying to sell their first home – but no-one is buying.

According to STUFF there are 2181 homes for sale across the Wellington region, more than at any point in the past seven years.

It’s a drastic reversal of recent trends. Consider that, in December 2020, there were just 346 homes for sale.

House prices, accordingly, have dipped – by 1.5 per cent during the last quarter, according to valuation company Quotable Value, with claims that some sellers have lowered prices by up to 20 per cent.

Economists and real estate agents all have their own jargon to describe the turnaround: “A buyer’s market.” “A shift in momentum.” “The bottom end of the market is sagging.” “The bottom has fallen out.”

Wellington’s average home values declining

Beth Coughlan has a phrase of her own: “quite disappointing”. At the start of the year, the Coughlans listed their first family home, in the Lower Hutt suburb of Naenae, for enquiries over $859,000. No-one was interested. They dropped the price to $815,000, then $759,000 and, now, earlier this week, $699,000.

“The market did need to change, I think we could all agree on that,” Coughlan said. “But it is really disheartening, as a vendor, to not know how long you’ll be sitting there.”

Coughlan was instead holding onto the consolation that they should “be able to buy in the same market” – eventually. “It’s just getting it sold – you can’t buy until you’ve sold.”

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ANZ Bank chief economist Sharon Zollner said the family had little to worry about.

“It’s a more stressful market to sell in, but they’ll get it back when they’re the buyer, and they buy a house that’s been marked down by $250,000,” she said.

“The people I feel sorry for are the ones who’ve just stretched themselves to the absolute max for a house that’s now worth 5 per cent less before the ink’s even dried.”

House prices tipped to fall in Wellington – is this the end of NZ’s property boom?

It’s just the beginning, experts predict, with ANZ picking prices to fall by 10 per cent over the next year.

That’s hardly a course correction though, given house price growth in Wellington peaked at 36 per cent per annum in October last year. A 10 per cent drop in Wellington City, for instance, would place the average house price at $1.12m – bringing prices back in line with March 2021.