Dunedin’s house sellers bank $41.6m profit
DUNEDIN and Queenstown property owners reaped more than $67 million in profits in the quarter to December and the tourism hot spot vied with Auckland for top profit margins.
New research by CoreLogic, a property information and services provider in New Zealand, Australia and the US, showed Queenstown property owners banked $25.8 million in profits, while in Dunedin the total profit was $41.6 million.
CoreLogic compiles its Pain and Gain data using median profit margins achieved from sales, the capital gain made from the last sale against the previous purchase price.
Auckland median profits for the quarter were up from $360,000 to $370,000, Queenstown was up from $339,000 to $357,000 and Dunedin rose from $112,770 to $117,000. Queenstown reported no lossmaking sales.
Nationally, the proportion of properties sold at a loss dropped from 4.3% to 4% and the larger gross losses totalled $13.9 million.
Small increases were seen in Auckland (up 0.3%) and Hamilton (up 1.2%) during the quarter, but there was a substantial decline in Tauranga (down 2.5%).
The report said the proportion of lossmaking sales in Wellington was the lowest it had been for a decade, at 1.1%, which was consistent with upwards price pressure in the capital.
Dunedin was also in a strong position. It had the lowest proportion of losses of New Zealand’s main centres, at 0.7%, reflecting solid values growth in the city, the report said.
Nationally, properties sold at a loss were owned for a median 4.2 years, while for properties sold at a profit, the period rose from 7.9 years to 8.1 years.
The report said that result was consistent with a slowly rising market where the merits of longer hold periods came to the fore.
Property types played a greater role in determining profits or losses, compared with the previous quarter, with 9.6% of apartment sales and just 3.6% of house sales making a loss.
‘‘This shows that any market fatigue that has set in has been concentrated in the apartment segment,’’ the report said.