Prices continue to rise unabated

For Barfoot & Thompson, June sales numbers normally start to edge lower.

But this year the agency sold 1,243 homes, up 3.8% on the previous month – and both the average and median prices were higher than those for May.

“The average price paid was $1,143,328, up 2.6% on May prices and the median price at $1,109,000 was up 3.4%.

“The rate at which prices are increasing did ease slightly in June but the rate remains stubbornly high,” says Peter Thompson, managing director of Barfoot & Thompson.

“Our June-on-June median price increase now stands at 21.9%. The Real Estate Institute’s Price Index for May-to-May for Auckland [showed] an increase of 26.3%.

“Demand for housing, low levels of supply and record low mortgage interest rates are continuing to prove a stronger counterbalance to the new regulations looking to pull back the rate of price increases.”

For high-end housing, demand continues unabated, and during the month the agency sold 120 homes for more than $2 million. The only month last year when it sold more $2-million-plus homes than this was in December.

Throughout last year, the agency’s monthly average for the number of homes that sold for over $2 million was 61.

“During June we sold 170 homes for less than $750,000, which represented 13.8% of our total sales for the month,” says Thompson.

Even though the agency’s new listings for the month at 1,485 were solid, at month-end its total listings at 2,864 was the lowest at a month-end for five years.

Demand and competition for homes has never been higher. The number of homes Barfoot & Thompson had for sale at the end of the month was down by a quarter on the number available at the same time last year.