Bay home hunters driving up Waikato market

More Bay of Plenty people are moving to the Waikato, helping drive up the average asking price, figures from realestate.co.nz reveal.

The figures, released this morning, show the average asking price for a New Zealand house hit an all-time high with stock at an all-time low for May 2016.

The May national average asking price reached $570,971, up 7.2 per cent from the same time the previous year.

On the supply side in May, the number of new properties that came onto the marketnationally dropped 7.1 per cent from the previous month and the long term average has also fallen.

The Bay of Plenty has had 714 new property listings for May, an increase of 6.7 per cent.

Realestate.co.nz spokewoman Vanessa Taylor said Waikato had a ''interesting profile'', helped by an influx of moving moving over from the Bay.

"Asking prices are up a healthy 6.1 per cent on the previous month ... At the same time new listings remain relatively static in the Waikato region,'' Ms Taylor said.

"We could be tempted to make an assumption that Aucklanders are looking further south to the Waikato. However data shows us that we have seen astrong (75.35 per cent) increase in users from the Bay of Plenty looking at the region.

''In saying that, the strongest interest is actually coming from users who already reside within the Waikato region.''

Ms Taylor said overall the current property market was ''definitely a sellers' market''.

"In this environment, if no new listings were to come onto the market nationally and all the existing properties sold, theoretically there would be no propertiesfor sale in New Zealand within 12 weeks.''