Property

Chinese buyers not big part of market: Data

New data from realestate.co.nz shows that property prices are stabilising nationwide - and East Asian buyers, including Chinese, are far less active than some reports have indicated.

Monday, August 03rd 2015

Less than 3% of realestate.co.nz’s online traffic comes from East Asia*, according to an analysis of the website’s viewers.

The analysis revealed about 5% of all those looking at Auckland property have an East Asian language as their first language.

This is a slight increase from 4% over the same time period last year.

However, geo-location analysis showed that about half of that traffic came from people already living in New Zealand.

Further, Auckland property traffic from the 10 largest East Asian countries amounted to just 2.8% of the total in the period January to April 2015.

This compares to the 2.98% recorded over the same period last year.

Realestate.co.nz CEO Brendon Skipper said the data indicated that East Asian interest in New Zealand property was a consistent, but relatively small, proportion of the website’s total traffic.

“It is clear that a large number of these Asian language speakers are actually located in New Zealand.”

The website creates a linguistic map of traffic using the default language setting in the device of each of its visitor, he explained.

This enables realestate.co.nz to quantify traffic numbers for each language setting, regardless of location, including those who are residing in New Zealand.

Meanwhile, the website’s monthly data showed that property asking prices nationwide have stabilised in July, with an increase of only 0.1%.

Asking prices in Auckland, Canterbury, Wellington and Hawke’s Bay all fell marginally, with Waikato the only major population centre to show an increase.

Auckland’s average asking price fell by 1.4% – which was the biggest drop since October 2014.

However, Skipper said the overall price graph in Auckland was still trending strongly upwards.

“We have seen occasional minor decreases in Auckland property prices over the last few years, so we must assume this is a temporary blip.”

The data also showed that housing market inventory was tight nationally, which means that supply in most centres round the country is low.

Only in the West Coast and Taranaki does current supply exceed the local long-term average.

None the less, listings were up nationally.

Seven of the 19 New Zealand regions had more properties come to the market in July 2015 than in July 2014.

This included the Auckland market, which has a large influence on national figures.

*Realestate.co.nz's East Asia country grouping was China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.

Comments

On Tuesday, August 04th 2015 8:02 am Ricardo said:

Nice try to water down reality. Chinese have their own web sites, in Chinese, from which they can view and select local Chinese agents to buy NZ homes through.

Most Read

Unity First Home Buyer special 3.99
SBS FirstHome Combo 3.99
ICBC 4.25
Co-operative Bank - First Home Special 4.39
TSB Special 4.49
ANZ Special 4.49
ASB Bank 4.49
SBS Bank Special 4.49
Unity Special 4.49
Westpac Special 4.49
Kiwibank Special 4.49
TSB Special 4.00
Kainga Ora 4.49
Kiwibank Special 4.49
ICBC 4.59
Unity Special 4.65
ANZ Special 4.69
SBS Bank Special 4.69
Nelson Building Society 4.69
BNZ - Std 4.69
Westpac Special 4.75
AIA - Go Home Loans 4.75
ICBC 4.99
Kainga Ora 5.15
SBS Bank Special 5.29
Westpac Special 5.29
BNZ - Std 5.29
Kiwibank Special 5.39
TSB Special 5.39
ASB Bank 5.45
AIA - Go Home Loans 5.45
Co-operative Bank - Owner Occ 5.49
BNZ - Classic 5.59
SBS FirstHome Combo 3.29
AIA - Back My Build 3.34
SBS Construction lending for FHB 3.74
CFML 321 Loans 3.95
Co-operative Bank - Owner Occ 4.99
Co-operative Bank - Standard 4.99
Heartland Bank - Online 5.30
ICBC 5.39
Kiwibank - Offset 5.65
Kiwibank 5.65
Kainga Ora 5.69

More Stories

Wednesday, January 07th 2026

Queenstown not off the radar for first home buyers

First home buyers are not being deterred by Queenstown’s soaring house prices.

Record levels of first home buyers taking out low deposit loans

Tuesday, December 23rd 2025

Record levels of first home buyers taking out low deposit loans

About half of all first home buyer lending has been done at a less than 20% deposit in recent months.

Buyers sitting on the sidelines in best time to buy in a decade

Thursday, December 04th 2025

Buyers sitting on the sidelines in best time to buy in a decade

Stable house prices, low interest rates and plenty of houses to choose from are still not enticing buyers.

Differing views on 50-year mortgage

Tuesday, December 02nd 2025

Differing views on 50-year mortgage

US president Donald Trump recently raised the idea of 50 year mortgages; but New Zealand advisers say such long loans won’t take off in New Zealand.