Wairarapa property values a mixed bag

Harcourts Wairarapa managing director Prue Hamill said the latest QV figures highlight the stability of the market. FILE PHOTO

Low interest rates, changes to KiwiSaver lending and post-election stability are giving homeowners more confidence to move around, a Wairarapa property expert says.

The average asking price for a Wairarapa property listed on realestate.co.nz was up 9.1 per cent from February to $357,949 last month.

Meanwhile, the QV March residential price movement index showed Masterton home values dropped slightly year-on-year to an average of $239,643. In Carterton, home values rose 6.3 per cent to $274,116 and in South Wairarapa, home values stayed the same at $302,512.

Harcourts Wairarapa managing director Prue Hamill said the figures highlighted the stability of the market.

"There's been low interest rates for some time now," she said. "Around the election people didn't want to move. That's settled down now and the new changes to KiwiSaver mean it's not as hard as first home buyers to enter the market.

"We're getting multiple offers on properties in all parts of the market."

Ms Hamill said she wasn't surprised Carterton home values had risen as it was becoming a popular place to live.

"It's becoming an alternative to Greytown, which traditionally has more expensive properties."

Home buyers were a mixed bag, she said. "There's a mix of people moving within the Wairarapa and people coming from out of the region.

"We've had people from Wellington interested in Carterton and Greytown, families living in South Wairarapa moving to Masterton because they want to be closer to the schools and so on."

Nationally, the average asking price of a home on realestate.co.nz in March reached a new high of $514,712. It was the third consecutive month of record asking prices.

The number of new listings in March was the lowest for March since 2009, however.

QV's data showed residential property values increased 2.8 per cent over the past three months and 7.7 per cent year-on-year.

This put values 21.3 per cent above 2007.

QV national spokeswoman Andrea Rush said it would be interesting to see whether changes to lending for first-home buyers affected values.

"The Government's new Homestart policy may lead to increased activity amongst first-home buyers around the country and it will remain to be seen whether this has an impact on values," she said.

"The Reserve Bank is considering tighter rules on borrowing to property investors which it has said may now be defined as those who own more than one property and thus could cover any property the owner does not live in.

"Currently close to 40 per cent of all residential house sales in New Zealand are purchased by those who own two or more properties." NZME.