winter has also failed to come to aid of first home buyers in the coastal and mountainous region of Taranaki, where shortage of listings is pushing house prices beyond reach. The Quartile Index published by largest valuation and property services company in the country shows that during three months to September, prices of entry-level homes rose by 6.5 per cent, as the region leapfrogged to the third highest in the country behind Rotorua and Nelson.
During winter, a time when the market usually begins to cool off, prices of first homes in New Zealand’s main centres increased by an average of 3.6 per cent, while in Taranaki this value was 0.3 per cent higher than the national average and 2.1 per cent more from a year ago.
“Unfortunately, the Bank of Mum and Dad is going to be required by a lot of first home buyers,” the region’s ambassador for the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand, Garry Malcolm, noted, adding that more buyers from out of town also appear to be contributing to the slump in homes available for sale, as buyers continue to exceed the sellers in the market.
“I think we’ll see a lot of movement. People are wanting to move to provincial New Zealand from the big cities,” he said. “Covid is something we all have to live with, and people see the lifestyle is good [in the regions], so first-home buyers are competing with out-of-town buyers.”
According to Malcolm, costs of building a new home has also increased over the recent months, with cost of materials going up by 7 to 15 per cent. “Unless we can get people moving out of their existing homes and moving up, there’s not that stock to sell to first home buyers,” he added. “It depends on the economy. We don’t know how this lockdown will affect it yet.”
