JANUARY 2025
Market Report.
APARTMENT & RESIDENTIAL
Part of the group with a family factor.
CITY REALTY GROUP CREATE RECOGNISE GROW
04. Market CommentHeads Up, Eyes Front.
06.
Auckland Central Statistics December 2024
08.
Recent Sales December 2024
16.
Article – Tony Alexander: US punctures Kiwi hopes of cheaper mortgages in 2025
14.
Case Study & Auction Update with Cameron Brain
18.
Our month in Review Top Stories & Events from the City Realty Group
22.
Article – Kelvin Davidson: Is NZ’s economy out of the hole yet?
24.
LoanMarket Update: Hope on the Horizon
26. Our Awards & Accolades
28. Ray White Auckland Central & Wynyard Quarter
Heads Up, Eyes Front.
“With 2025 off to a strong start, the year is shaping up to be incredibly promising, highlighted by our highly anticipated Auction Day on 30 January,” says Daniel Horrobin, Director of City Realty Group.
“We’re gearing up for a huge Auction Day on 30 January, with what is building to be over 20 Auctions lined up at our central city office on the day. It’s shaping up to be an exceptional opportunity for sellers to beat the competition by getting ahead of the anticipated influx of listings expected in the first quarter 2025,” says Daniel.
The momentum started early with the Ray White exclusive Herald Homes publication on 4 January. “Those who worked through the holiday period have reported strong inquiry levels directly tied to this exposure,” Daniel adds.
The outlook for 2025 is further buoyed by the upcoming OCR announcement on 19 February.
“A widely expected cut to the OCR would provide a further confidence boost across the market, reinforcing the positive sentiment we’re already seeing,” he notes.
While media reports carry cautious optimism, there’s acknowledgment of positive market
activity. A NZ Herald OneRoof article on 2 January highlighted renewed interest from investors and traders in the auction room.
“Investors and traders have started to show their hands again in the auction room and while the resulting sale prices are nowhere near what they were at market peak, the bidding action has been on par. The end-of-year house price forecasts from the major banks have ranged from 5% to 10%-plus in 2025, although rising unemployment, a glut of stock on the market, debt-to-income ratio lending rules, and uncertainty in global politics may act as restraints.”
Reflecting on the bigger picture, Daniel concludes, “The central city is alive with activity—cruise ships arriving, spectacular yachting events, and back-to-back Eden Park concerts creating a vibrant backdrop for the real estate market. It’s a mood of vigilant optimism, and we’re thrilled to lead the charge into 2025. Bring it on, we can’t wait!”
The outlook for 2025 is further buoyed by the upcoming OCR announcement on 19 February. “A widely expected cut to the OCR would provide a further confidence boost across the market, reinforcing the positive sentiment we’re already seeing,” he notes.
Total Sales
December 2024
37
December 2023
There was a -56% decrease in the total number of sales year on year.
Total Sales Value Median Sales Price Median Days On Market
December 2024
$15,920,800
December 2023
December 2024
$300,000
December 2023
86 $45,183,611 $380,750
There was a -65% decrease in the total sales value year on year.
Source: REINZ
There was a -21% decrease in the total median sale price year on year.
December 2024
49
December 2023
41
There was a 19% increase in the total median days on market year on year.
Recent Sales.
$243,500 1 Bed (or Studio) Median Sale Price 2 Bedrooms 3+ Bedrooms By number of bedrooms $555,000 $1,300,000
Total Sales
12 2 Bedrooms 3+ Bedrooms By number of bedrooms
22 1 Bed (or Studio)
2
STATEMENT:
Ray White repeatedly achieves higher sales prices than other agencies, and it’s not just our claim— here are the facts:
301/83 Halsey Street, ‘Lighter Quay’
1 1 0
SOLD WITH RAY WHITE
Sale Price: $150,000 + GST
($172,500 incl GST)
Sale Date: 24th of October 2024
201/83 Halsey Street, ‘Lighter Quay’
1 1 0
SOLD BY ANOTHER AGENCY
Sale Price: $50,000
Sale Date: 6th November 2024
* IMPORTANT NOTE: Both units are identical with just one floor level separating them, yet Ray White sold for $122,500 more than the other agency.
Request an appraisal today.
Ray White Auckland Central is your home for apartments.
305/8 Ronayne Street, ‘The Landings’
SOLD WITH RAY WHITE
Sale Price: $157,500
Sale Date: 1st August 2024
* IMPORTANT NOTE:
803/8 Ronayne Street, ‘The Landings’
SOLD BY ANOTHER AGENCY
Sale Price: $105,300
Sale Date: 7th August 2024
The unit sold by the other agency included a car park, yet it still sold for $52,200 less than the price Ray White achieved for a property without a car park.
110/8 Ronayne Street, ‘The Landings’
SOLD WITH RAY WHITE
Sale Price: $135,000
Sale Date: 12th September 2024
* IMPORTANT NOTE:
205/8 Ronayne Street, ‘The Landings’
SOLD BY ANOTHER AGENCY
Sale Price: $116,500
Sale Date: 21st August 2024
The unit sold by the other agency included a car park, yet it still sold for $18,500 less than the price Ray White achieved for a property without a car park.
There’s an old saying: “You get what you pay for.”
In these case studies, maybe saving a little on commission upfront led to a significantly higher loss in the end.
List with Ray White for the best results and more money in your pocket. And if fees are a concern for you - let’s talk.
City Realty Group End of Year Auction Report.
As 2024 came to a close, City Realty Group concluded a successful year of Auctions, finishing on December 21st with an impressive total of 448 Auctions conducted.
Despite a challenging market environment, our team delivered a Clearance Rate of 66.22%, demonstrating resilience and expertise in the real estate auction sector. The total sales value for Auctions in 2024 reached $179,296,749, marking a remarkable 66% increase compared to the total Auction Sales value in 2023.
Among the notable results of the year, the lowest Auction Sale price was $2,000 for a leasehold apartment requiring remedial work in the Railway Campus on Te Taou Crescent, Auckland. On the other end of the spectrum, our most expensive Auction Sale achieved $8,630,000 for a luxurious penthouse apartment on St Heliers Bay Road, St Heliers. These results illustrate the diverse range of properties we successfully brought to market.
Throughout the year, we engaged with 790 registered bidders, averaging 1.7 bidders per Auction. This level of participation reflects the ongoing interest in auctions as a preferred method of buying and selling property, even in a shifting market.
Looking ahead to 2025, we are encouraged by a strong start to the year. On January 29th, our Ray White Sandringham and Ray White
Mt Roskill offices are hosting an Auction Event featuring 12 properties. Following closely, on January 30th, the Ray White Auckland Central and Ray White Wynyard Quarter offices will hold an Auction Event with 23 properties on offer. These early events indicate robust activity, fueled by a combination of growing market confidence and favorable interest rates, creating an attractive environment for buyers.
We anticipate 2025 to be a busy and dynamic year, and we remain committed to providing exceptional auction services to meet the needs of our clients. If you’re interested in learning more about Auctions or would like to discuss how we can assist with your property needs, please don’t hesitate to reach out. You can contact me directly at cameron.brain@ raywhite.com.
Tony Alexander: US punctures Kiwi hopes of cheaper mortgages in 2025
The next OCR cut could be as low as 0.25%.
ANALYSIS: Happy 2025 and I hope everyone was able to get some semblance of a break over the Christmas-New Year period. At the end of my final column for 2024 written on December 17, I wrote “2025 is likely to be a year of mild economic recovery, mild declines in interest rates, and mild upward movement in prices and turnover in the real estate market.” In the past four weeks do things look any different? No.
Consider the outlook for interest rates. My warning for some months has been that underlying business pricing pressures (the need to rebuild margins) mean that as our economy improves slowly through 2025, businesses will seek to raise prices when they feel they can get away with it. Support for this view came just before Christmas
in the ANZ’s monthly Business Outlook Survey.
Whereas in June a net 35% of businesses said they plan to raise their prices in the coming 12 months, this rose to 42% in November, then 43% in December. Pricing plans are rising, not falling. This tendency was confirmed in the just-released Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion from NZIER. Whereas on average in the September quarter a net 7% of businesses said they plan to raise their selling prices, now a net 15% are planning to do so.
This is still below the average of 21% and tells us that scope exists for the Reserve Bank to cut the cash rate again come the next review on February 19. But at best the cut will be 0.5% and it may be just
There is a risk that fixed mortgage interest rates will not fall by all that much this year. Photo / Fiona Goodall
0.25%. Where might the Reserve Bank caution come from to justify just a 0.25% reduction? Developments offshore.
In the United States market expectations for easing monetary policy by the Fed this year have fallen away steadily in recent months then declined with a thud this week following far stronger than expected strength in the jobs market. The feeling amongst analysts increasingly is that the US monetary authority will be less and less feeling inflation risks lie on the downside and that extra job-creating stimulus needs to be applied to the US economy.
Some analysts in fact now think the first cut by the Fed last year of 0.5% was a mistake and one or two are now predicting that no further cuts will in fact occur this cycle. That seems unlikely but the main impact has been some sharp increases in US wholesale interest rates, which have boosted the US dollar and led to this week’s media headlines of the NZ dollar falling to just above US 55 cents from 62 cents in October.
Our central bank will surely be wondering if the new examination of a cyclical rise in inflationary pressures in the US means attention needs to shift to this development here as well. My view is that it does and hence the risk that fixed mortgage interest rates do not fall by all that much from current levels for terms of two years and beyond.
If I were borrowing currently, I’d probably still feel happy to fix only for a very short term. But there is a good chance I would jump to fixing for a three-year term before the middle of the year.
Having said that, it pays to note that there is considerable uncertainty regarding the growth, inflation, and interest rate impacts of the policies to be enacted by the incoming US president. For that reason, borrowers need to be careful not to get overly fixated on any particular view regarding where interest rates will head and how rapidly this year. Potential is high for all of us forecasters to be severely embarrassed.
- Tony Alexander is an independent economics commentator. Additional commentary from him can be found at www.tonyalexander.nz
@raywhiteaucklandcentral
@raywhitewynyardquarter
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@raywhite.mtroskill
Party Season
What a night to remember!
Our City Realty Group crew from Auckland Central, Wynyard Quarter, Sandringham, and Mt Roskill came together at Parasol and Swing, and wow, did we party! Laughs, drinks, epic vibes— celebrating all the hard work we’ve smashed out this year.
Here’s to the best team and an even bigger 2025!
Exciting news ahead!
Our family is growing.
Congratulations to our Gabi for the safe arrival of Tyler over the Christmas and New Year Period!
More miracles are also on the way.
Congratulations to Ryan Bridgeman who is expecting twins, Jamie from LoanMarket is awaiting the arrival of his first child, also Tony Warren from our Wynyard Quarter branch who is expecting, and finally Dan & Claire who have the arrival of their second baby to look forward to!
So much family excitment this year!
Hello Yell w.
Available now for a limited time. SIZZLING SUMMER DEALS ARE HERE!
Summer is here, which means so are our seasonal property marketing specials.
Get in touch with your preferred sales agent today to find out more.
Kelvin Davidson: Is NZ’s economy out of the hole yet?
The five things you need to know about the housing market this week.
1. Consumer spending is looking better …. or worse
There were some slightly contradictory messages in the data early last week, with Stats NZ reporting that spending on electronic cards rose strongly in December (core retail +1.8% monthly), but then the BNZ-BusinessNZ Performance of Services Index remained in contractionary territory for the 10th month in a row. To be fair, I probably wouldn’t get too fixated on the different patterns; it’s more just a sign that our economy remains generally subdued/ patchy and without a clear upward trend yet. It really just adds further support to the case for another OCR cut on February 19.
2. Inflation well within target, as expected
On top of the patchy economic data, we also got further confirmation last week of subdued inflationary pressures. Headline consumer price inflation for Q4 came in at 2.2%, unchanged from the Q3 result. The non-tradable/domestic component (such as rents and council rates) eased to 4.5%, while the tradable component (e.g. petrol) was -1.1%. That split of the data wasn’t quite as anticipated, but the overall net result was still in line with expectations. As such, there was nothing here to radically alter the outlook for another 0.5% Official Cash Rate cut in February, as the Reserve Bank looks to kickstart the economy again and ward off the risk that inflation gets too low (or even negative) at some point down the track
The latest inflation figures point to another big cut in the Official Cash Rate when the Reserve Bank meets next month. Photo / Getty Images
3. Net migration remains subdued
Stats NZ reported last week that November’s net migration balance was 2200, which meant the annual running total dropped further, now sitting at around 30,600 – the lowest since December 2022. It’s difficult to know how much further it falls, and indeed may actually settle down at around that figure on a more sustained basis. But with the supply of available rental listings now high, the slowdown in migration and hence overall population is already seeing rental growth hold down at low levels.
4. Watching jobs and confidence
Coming up this week: Stats NZ will publish December’s filled jobs figures on Tuesday and ANZ will publish their business and consumer confidence surveys for January on Thursday and Friday respectively. It’ll be an interesting batch of data releases, given some hints in the November jobs data that labour market conditions aren’t collapsing, and that other sentiment indicators suggest a slow improvement in the economy. The year ahead may not be an economic boom, but it should at least fare better than 2024.
5. Back to the mortgage market again too
There’s been a lot of coverage of lending activity recently, and this week we’ll get another update of the figures from the Reserve Bank, relating to mortgage flows in December. It’d be no surprise to see a continuation of the recent upward trend for overall home lending activity, but my focus will be on the various cuts of the figures – e.g. split by loan-to-value ratio and debt-to-income ratio. The big picture lately is that high LVR (or low deposit) lending has been relatively muted, as has high DTI activity. But with internal servicing test rates at the banks having fallen, it’s going to be intriguing to see if/when high DTI lending starts to rise more appreciably again – and hence when the caps (six for owner-occupiers and seven for investors) potentially start to become a bigger factor.
CoreLogic chief economist Kelvin Davidson: “I anticipate house prices will rise in 2025, but perhaps by only 5-7%.” Photo / Peter Meecham
If history is any guide, this could lead to increased demand and rising property prices. While the past few years have been tough for many, the future looks bright, and I’m feeling optimistic about what 2025 will bring.
One major highlight will be the return of full interest deductibility – a gamechanger for investors.
Rate My Agent Awards
RAY WHITE AUCKLAND CENTRAL ARE PROUD TO BE ACKNOWLEDGED BY RATE MY AGENT FOR THE BELOW AWARDS
CURRENTLY PLACED
#1
Auckland Central
Agency of the Year 2025
#1
Agency of the Year 2025 Grafton
#1
Agency of the Year 2025 Eden Terrace
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Meet the team.
SALES TEAM - AUCKLAND CENTRAL OFFICE
Daniel Horrobin
Cameron Brain
Pauline Bridgman
Mike Richards
Ady Huang
Ben Parkes
Craig Warburton
Dom Worthington
Dusan Valenta
Habeeb Urrahman
Carlos Del la Varis
Chris Cairns
Grant Elliott
Joon Kim
Keisha Gutierrez Krister Samuel
Jeong Lee
Chris Guilford
Derek Yin Sales Manager Wynyard Quarter & Sandringham
Belinda Henson
Casey Chen
Kristine Liu Lecta Chanthawong Business Manager
Claire Firmin Business Development Manger
Neil Dayal
Judi Yurak
Leo Zhang
SALES TEAM - WYNYARD QUARTER OFFICE
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LoanMarket Mortgage Adviser
Ryan Bridgman
Sam Huang
Steve King Steve Kirk
Jamie Maclennan
Luke Crockford
Gabriela Galateanu
Andrew Bond
Ainsley Lewis
Max Beliak
Thomas Price
Simon Lee
Tony Warren
Marco Sahar
Michelle Yurak
Leo Zhu
Phil Cavanagh
Madan Neupane
Erin Dayal
Renuka Bisht
Stella Jo
Neil Dayal
