New Zealand House Prices Continue To Rise: QV

New Zealand House Prices Continue To Rise: QV

Residential property prices in New Zealand continued to increase in September, driven largely by strong activity in Auckland and Canterbury where the earthquake rebuild is underway, data released by government valuer Quotable Value (QV) showed Tuesday.

House prices increased 5.3 percent annually in September. The average sales price of a residential property in New Zealand was NZ$428,308 over the three months ended September.

In the past three months, values increased 1.8 percent, and edged ahead of the previous market peak of late 2007, data showed.

"While nationwide values have been slowly increasing for over a year now, we need to put this into context. The rate of value increase is relatively slow, currently around 5 percent per year compared to the 10 percent to 15 percent we saw during the mid 2000's," QV Research Director Jonno Ingerson said.

Data from the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) yesterday showed that house prices in New Zealand increased 0.3 percent sequentially to NZ$371,000 in September, reflecting mainly a shortage of new listings that prompted buyers to make rapid decisions.