One house, 16 offers: Buyers flood Hawke's Bay property market post-Covid

One home put up for sale in Hawke's Bay after the Covid-19 lockdown received 16 separate offers from buyers desperate to get on the ladder.

The house in Akina, Hastings, is a demonstration of just how much demand is out there in a surprisingly stable post-Covid market in the region, real estate agents say.

Property Brokers Hawke's Bay regional manager Joe Snee said buyers were definitely out there, and demand for houses in the region was outstripping supply.

"The prices are good, the volumes are back but the amount of the houses available to buy are down, which is supply and demand," he said.

"The spread is quite large of investors trying to get deals in and people looking for houses and paying good prices."

The median value of properties in Hawke's Bay was $395,000, as of June 2019 – an increase of 12.9 per cent year-on-year, according to OneRoof and Valocity data.

Hastings and Napier have a higher median value of $530,000 and $565,000 respectively, while areas such as Wairoa ($200,000 – the lowest median property value in New Zealand) bring the region's median value down.

The North Shore area of Auckland has the highest median value at $1.09m.

Wairoa (+29 per cent), Hastings (+12.8 per cent) and Napier (+11.9 per cent) all recorded a 12-month median property value increase in the 12 months to June 2020 and data showed they remained, like most of the rest of NZ, stable across the lockdown period.

James MacPherson, of Bayleys, said less listings on the market in Hawke's Bay and a shortage of supply was holding property values up.

"In some cases, it is even pushing them further up," he said. "There are less listings on the market than there was this time last year.

"It is a very good time for somebody to sell if they were thinking of selling.

"But nobody knows whether values will continue to rise."

Snee said a "post-Covid boom" had caused an increase in median property value.

"I would imagine that it will slowly settle," he said.

"Moving forward, it would be wrong to think the pandemic wouldn't have had an impact.

"But what that looks like, who knows?

"The challenge will be the uncertainty of the people wanting to bring the houses to the market. But there are plenty of buyers out there looking for houses."

New Zealand property values have fallen just 1 per cent since the start of the Covid-19 crisis.

Of the 16 major regions in New Zealand, 12 have recorded declines since March 25 - the day before the country went into month-long lockdown. Values in the remaining regions have stalled.

OneRoof editor Owen Vaughan said the data showed the housing market was doing better than forecast at the start of the crisis.

"While the full impact of Covid-19 won't be clear until mortgage deferrals and the wage subsidy scheme come to an end, it seems the housing market has rebounded from the lockdown," he said.