The Monthly Property Report from REINZ, has shown the median house price for New Zealand rose 1.8% in March 2018 to reach a new record high of $560,000 up from $550,000 in March 2017 .

The number of properties sold in March around New Zealand fell by 9.9% when compared to the same time last year with 7,768 properties sold in comparison to 8,622 in March 2017 which was the highest month for sales volume in 2017.

The March statistics on the left relate to Manukau and the data on the right relate to Papatoetoe.

Read more here: https://www.reinz.co.nz/residential-property-data-gallery

The big talk recently is most certainly about the new CVs (council valuations), or RVs as they are also referred to (rating valuations).

I’ve already seen articles in the media reporting that, as some houses aren’t worth as much as their new CV, it’s a clear indicator of the market being down. This is not the case. 

The last time the CVs  were updated was in 2014 when the market was skyrocketing. We had the same issue then — some valuations were too high, some were too low, and the rest were about right. 
Remember that the CVs are a rates assessing tool for the council — they're not a market valuation. For example, the home I sold recently at 17 Rotoma Rise, Clover Park sold $118,000 above the new CV. I took another home to auction which had a new CV of $980,000 yet the market interest stopped in the high $700,000s.

Auction performance

In the past four weeks of auctions, Harcourts has called 150 auctions, selling 70 under the hammer with a clearance rate of 47%. Compared to October, this is a small decrease of about 10% — but there was a 50% increase in the number of auctions called over the last four weeks.

Market Performance Post Election

No significant change has been noticed at this point and what we are seeing is more of the same: an increase in listings consistent with seasonality and volumes being typical of this time of year.  We haven’t seen panic selling but, at the same time, any hopes home owners may have had of prices increasing at stratospheric rates have evaporated.

The general consensus seems to be that prices will continue to remain firm for the foreseeable future — so long as there are no drastic changes in net migration flows, sharp sustained changes in interest rates, radical shifts in the New Zealand and Australian labour markets, or a sudden big change in Reserve Bank rules.