Homes a bumper earner
Does your house earn more than you? Grey Lynn bucks the trend
Atypical Auckland worker would need to spend three years toiling on the job to earn as much money as Grey Lynn homes made last year.
Homes in the leafy Auckland suburb sold for a median price of $1.7 million in the June quarter — or $165,000 higher than the same period a year earlier.
Based on that, a Grey Lynn house would take just 121 days to jump in value by the $54,860 a typical Aucklander pulls in from their annual salary.
Yet Grey Lynn was a rare exception in an otherwise falling Auckland market as prices mostly took a tumble.
Glendowie was hit hardest with a $415,000 drop in median sales price in the past year to $1.82m, and Greenhithe prices fell $373,750 to $1.58m, Real Estate Institute data showed.
In 15 Auckland suburbs — from among those with at least 20 sales over the past year — prices plummeted by more than $100,000.
Auckland’s median sales price as a whole also fell $15,000 to $885,000.
Yet REINZ chief executive Bindi Norwell said the 1.7 per cent fall in Auckland’s median sales price wasn’t reason to panic.
“We’ve seen Auckland’s market flat for three and a half years, and it’s actually quite stable.”
The new figures present a stark contrast to the skyrocketing prices of Auckland’s recent housing boom when home owners regularly pocketed capital gains higher than annual salaries.
Yet the figures also come with a disclaimer. The Herald on Sunday crunched the numbers by comparing REI median sales price data against median salaries from Stats NZ’s latest income figures.
Median sales prices can be strongly influenced by the type of homes selling at a given time.
That means, for instance, when first-home buyers become active in a particular suburb, the overall median sales price can fall if a higher number of cheaper homes sell.
For this reason, a drop in median sales price didn’t necessarily mean the value of all homes in the area had gone down, Norwell said.
But although the picture was bleaker for Auckland home owners, owners in the ManawatuWhanganui region were laughing all the way to the bank.
The region’s median sales price jumped $51,875 to $362,500 in the 12 months to June.
That pipped the $48,880 median salary a typical worker made.
Put another way, a standard Manawatu-Whanganui home earned $142 a day, while a typical local pulled in $134.
Gisborne-Hawke’s Bay homes were the next best performing, jumping $46,500 in price to $468,500.
However, workers in the area pocketed slightly more, taking home a typical salary of $47,892.
Overall, New Zealand house prices continued to rise, but the pace of growth has slowed.
Although Manawatu-Whanganui was the only region where homes jumped in value by more than a typical annual salary over the past year, four regions had higher capital gains than salaries the year before.
Owen Vaughan, editor of property website OneRoof, said it was exciting to note locations that had been previously ignored by buyers and investors were now getting their moment in the sun.
“Suburbs in ManawatuWhanganui and Gisborne-Hawke’s Bay may not have the cool factor of places like Grey Lynn but they still have an immense amount of earning power.”
Norwell was pleased growth was taking place in more affordable areas, indicating first-home buyers were active in stepping on to the property ladder.
This also included Auckland where Otahuhu, Takanini, Henderson, Papakura, Papatoetoe and Mangere East all had price rises.
“We’ve had quite a lot of growth in those areas because they are more affordable and popular with first-home buyers as well as investors,” she said.