Bay houses top price rise index

Property prices have skyrocketed in the Hawke's Bay.

A lack of houses for sale has pushed the median asking price for Hawke's Bay properties up 20 per cent - the largest rise in the country.

Statistics released by Trade Me this week showed a 20.3 per cent increase in median asking prices for properties in 2014 compared with the previous year in Hawke's Bay.

Southland was next with a 16.4 per cent increase. Gisborne was the only region reporting a year-on-year fall in price expectation.

Tremains sales manager Darryl Buckley said the figures showed it was a good time for sellers as the market was saturated with home-hunters.

"At the moment supply is down but the demand is high. There is a huge buyer pool out there at the moment and it is quite difficult to satisfy their needs because there is not a huge amount of stock coming on the market.

"For the right property, this would be deemed a sellers' market," he said.

Despite the numbers of buyers however, property sellers hadn't been dramatically raising their asking prices, Mr Buckley said.

"Competition is quite high but we haven't seen any huge increase in sellers' expectations. Certainly not to such big degrees."

TelferYoung registered valuer Lucas Paku said he was "quite surprised" by the Trade Me figures.

Mr Paku said a decreasing number of real estate agents were listing properties on Trade Me, which he said meant higher-end prices could have distorted the figures.

"You're basically left with a smaller pool of properties that is reduced, so the proportion of where they sit is skewed in value."

Mr Paku had noticed an increase in median house prices in Napier but Hastings was trending downward.

"Over the last half of [2014] Napier median levels were consistently up 7 per cent and Hastings was consistently down 5 per cent."

Trade Me data showed the median asking price for a property had been $504,300 for the three months to December.

Head of Trade Me Property Nigel Jeffries said the pause after a recent surge in asking prices was expected.

"December is traditionally one of the quietest months of the year so this slowdown is more about there being fewer new listings, rather than an underlying weakness in price expectation by sellers."

Mr Jeffries said the median asking price for a property in New Zealand had consistently increased over the past five years.

"In December, we saw average asking prices across New Zealand increase by almost 13 per cent year-on-year, and over the past five years the expected property prices have risen more than 26 per cent."

Additional reporting NZME.