“The last six months have been almost unprecedented between first-home buyers initially and now more dominated by investors,” REINZ regional director Neville Falconer said.
“A lot more money has gone into the market.
“Gisborne has smashed records month on month.
“It's the Covid recovery, combined with pent-up buyer demand, combined with lack of supply, combined with New Zealand being a heck of a place to come to.
“Treasury thinks things are going to continue as they are for a while yet.”
Mr Falconer said most surprisingly over the year was how wrong the economists had been in April.
“It's been stunning, the difference between what was expected and the reality.”
However, he warned the “fear of missing out” could lead to some frustrated buyers skimping on pre-purchase building and LIM reports.
“It's very important. We really feel for people, especially first-time buyers, who might do their due diligence and get building reports and LIM reports only to miss out on properties time and again.
“That's a really tough call and it's a discouragement for them to go ahead and do their due diligence properly on the one they finally do get. That's an issue.
“Were it a perfect world we'd love to be able to say to every vendor ‘you provide a LIM report on this property for every purchaser'. Many of them do and they benefit through doing it, but we can't dictate that to everyone.
“The market is what it is but do your homework.”
Nationally, spending on homes rose 24.7 percent from $48.7 billion for the 11 months ending November 2019 to $60.8bn for the 11 months ending November 2020.
