Property Articles
We post interesting and relevant property articles and papers here from time to time and where appropriate the links to the full article.
Devonport Property Statistics.
Tuesday 8 February 2011, by Murray Pelham.
This is an extract out of an article I was asked to write for the online newspaper "The Devonport Speculator". Please refer to the article for the graphic representation.
When utilizing the Government Valuation or more correctly the RV (Rating Valuation) for sales analysis it provides a very useful tool in ascertaining a general overview of the market. Done every three years it provides a sound base to capture the relative to market movement over this period and can also be an indicator to changes in movement in different property types. However care has to be taken in not literally utilizing this data for individual properties. For Devonport the data provided shows the RV’s within 1% of the sales for December 2010. We note however that individually some of these sales were in excess of 20% below/above the RV. This equates to a difference in value of over $200,000 in some of these cases. My advice is; do not rely upon the Rating Valuation as a basis for the biggest financial decision you are likely to make. The same applies to E-Valuer which as I understand it merely utilizes the RV and adjusts it according to recent sales; therefore is only as good as the base data it is arrived from. In Devonport because of the age of the housing stock you will generally find run down properties may be over valued (the RV) whilst renovated ones can be undervalued particularly if no Building permit was issued for work done. Properties which are not villas or bungalows also tend to be overvalued as get caught up in the general multiples of the mass appraisal computer generated data. A quick note on the Devonport market. After a very poor year in 2010 we have recently seen more recent activity in the market and sales in excess of $1M are again more prevalent. It is a matter of buyers and sellers getting the right balance in terms of value rather than hanging on to that one high sale setting the benchmark and conversely for buyers trying to get the sale of the century. There is not the same pressure applied as when the market is booming and more time is able to be taken in doing due diligence which helps ensure a fair price.
NZ homes among the world's most expensive.
Monday April 30th 2012, NZ Herald.
If the prices don't get you down, the headlines will. 'Property prices reach new high'; 'Auckland house values soar'; 'Hamilton house prices tipped to rise' provide a flavour.
New Zealand homes are among the world's most expensive when comparing cost with income.
The latest Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey found the average value in Auckland was 6.4 times the city's annual average household income - less affordable than New York (6.2) and Los Angeles (5.7).
It's not much better elsewhere, with homes in Christchurch valued at 6.3 times the annual income, followed by Tauranga-Western Bay of Plenty (5.9), Dunedin (5.2) and Wellington (5.1). The survey, released in January, deemed all those areas "severely unaffordable".