Sales Prices
Sales Prices
Table of Contents
This page looks at aggregated sales prices. QV publish excellent data but seem unable to convert it to usable information so that is what I try to do. Hopefully you find excellent value here.
Actual Prices
To keep it simple, here is a chart of prices since 2018, the earliest QV allow me to use. I have asked for earlier data without success. It does not matter a lot because the only useful data is from 2016, ie the last time major changes were introduced to construction standards (4x2 treatment and minimum scaffolding)
Those changes make new houses a different product to older houses, yet the older houses are considered equal, so values rose across the board making earlier comparisons meaningless.
Sales prices rose during the bubble so it is best to ignore that period, looking through from 2020 to 2023. No surprise all regions have a consistent rise.
So house prices rise because sellers are greedy? Nope, see below
Indexed Prices - Affordability
Prices rise because money devalues, making it cost more dollars to buy houses, but the same effort to earn the dollars. This chart will predict house prices into the future, if only you could predict Household Incomes - you can’t.
If you know my work on rentals, you would see this coming. Sales prices rise with Household Incomes, and apart from changes to the makeup of houses (better insulation and builder safety) have probably followed incomes for a very long time. As you can see in the New Zealand data (hover over the black line) prices were 7.7 times median household income in 2018 and also 7.7 now. Some regions that has changed, local conditions in supply and demand can explain these changes, I can borrow from the Rental Prices page for those conditions.
Current Price Indexed
This is where it becomes easier to understand the current market with a tweak of data presentation. I have indexed prices to a point where we can all understand, the bottom of the market after the bubble. This chart shows growth since the bottom after the bubble, I’ll call that July 2023:
Notice how well indexed NZ Household Income follows the NZ sales prices index extremely well if you ignore the interest led bubble!
This resource will be updated monthly, so comments may become dated, because to update I don’t need to visit the page I can simply update the charts offline.