High house prices say folk tired of recession. New Plymouth prices surge.

Taranaki Daily News 15 September

Well, quite frankly, no. This is reliance on bald statistics without any investigation as to why prices (NOT values but prices) have gone up 4% in a month. Let me be clear. No house in New Plymouth experienced a 4% capital gain in August, unless it had work done to it. The median price rose because the houses that sold in NP in August where on average 4% better properties than those sold in July. This happens from time to time. Median prices have remained lowish over these last few months because investors have been active, and they shop at the bottom of the market. Also, the new Government initiative the Welcome Home Loans have certainly bought many new first home buyers into the picture. That initial burst of interest is waning, but interest over the rest of the market is increasing and that means better homes, properties of higher value are now showing up more in the median price statistics.

 This market is continuing to have plenty of buyer interest, but it is notable that although median prices rose 4% in the month of August, volume (sale numbers) dropped over 16% from 96 sales in July to only 80 in August. At the same time, to put all this into perspective, there has been about 2.4billion dollars worth of property bought & sold in New Plymouth every month over the last 6 months. That is a large market, one that will neither lift nor fall significantly over night. All these numbers will move about naturally month to month, they shouldn’t be the headline news the papers make them. Essentially its business as usual.

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