That was followed by Tūtūkākā (18 sales, median gain $651,500) and Mangawhai (44 sales, median gain $610,250).
However, those figures can’t be described as profit, because they don’t factor in any money homeowners spent on maintenance or improvements, or the costs of selling a home such as real estate agent fees, legal charges and expenses involved in moving house. They also don’t take into account how long the home was owned before being resold.
Some coastal settlements, such as Taiharuru and Taupō Bay, showed gains in excess of $1 million but the number of sales was too small to draw any meaningful conclusions.
At the other end of the scale, the Northland town with the lowest on-paper gain was Kaitāia (73 sales, median gain $198,000).
However, no one in Kaitāia lost money reselling their home, despite a relatively high number of sales. The same could not be said for areas such as Kamo, where the median gain was higher but a few owners ended up losing money on their homes.
The areas where the highest proportion of sellers lost money on their homes, 10 per cent, were Ruatangata West and Parahaki, both in Whangārei District. Again, however, the numbers are too low to draw any firm conclusions.
The district with the highest median gain was Kaipara ($394,250) followed by Whangārei ($365,000) and the Far North ($307,500).
Of the property sales that lost money, the district with the biggest median loss was also Kaipara ($97,500) followed by Whangārei ($64,000) and the Far North ($47,500).
OneRoof.co.nz editor Owen Vaughan said the analysis showed most people managed to sell their homes last year for more than they originally paid, despite strong headwinds in the housing market.
The average Northland property value had fallen by $86,000 since the peak in March 2022.
However, across the region the median gain last year was “still pretty healthy”. When properties sold at a loss, it was relatively small in percentage terms.
The properties with the biggest gains were those in attractive locations, especially coastal areas, and properties that had been held onto for many years or improved significantly.
Most of the losses occurred towards the end of 2022, which suggested the number of properties selling at a loss was likely to increase this year.
The gains were highest in Kaipara because of the district’s high property values overall, particularly in Mangawhai and Mangawhai Heads where people were spending “big sums” on holiday homes and lifestyle properties.
The Far North and Whangārei districts, on the other hand, were more diverse and had more affordable housing, which was reflected in lower gains but also smaller losses.
Kaipara property prices had also benefited from new infrastructure coming through, such as the northern motorway extension, and city dwellers pushing north into more affordable - by their standards at least - “lifestyle areas” on the Auckland fringe.
Overall Northland’s median gain in 2022 was $350,000 while the median loss was $55,000. The nationwide figures were $362,000 and $57,750, respectively.
The biggest gain of any Northland property was for a luxury beach house at Langs Beach which sold at the end of 2022 for $4.8m, more than double its 2021 valuation of $2.25m and more than $4m above the property’s previous sale price of $670,000 in 2006. However, that was before a multi-million-dollar home was built on the property in 2016.
