Bruce Morris looks at sales in two celebrated streets - one in Auckland, the other in Mt Maunganui - for a lead on prices over the past 15 months.
If you have money and you're eccentric enough to buy a property according to the name of the street, it would be hard to look past Marine Pde.
Throw that street into the search slot on QV's website, and you'll find 10 mentions sprinkled around the North Island and all
of them, naturally enough, are in sniffing distance of salt spray.
In hard times, prices for smart houses at fancy addresses often hold up in percentage terms better than ordinary streets in ordinary suburbs - perhaps because the occupiers tend to be people of more mature years who see no reason to move unless they can get somewhere near the price they want. On the other side of the ledger, there is always demand for those top streets, with people of means prepared to pay a fair price for a classy address.
So how has Marine Pde gone in the ups and downs of the past year or so? For an insight into the urban seaside market, a trawl through QV data for sales in Marine Pde in Herne Bay and Mt Maunganui in the 15 months to March 31 this year reveals little to excite real estate professionals.
No real surprises there because sales volumes during that period right across New Zealand were half what they were during the heights of the 2002-2007 boom. But the data shows that smart-sounding addresses sitting on the water offer no absolute protection when the economy is weak, confidence is low and credit tight.
Putting the two streets alongside each other is not comparing apples with apples.
Marine Pde in Herne Bay is one of the highest-valued streets in New Zealand's most expensive suburb, where an "average" house costs $1.75 million. That average would probably hit $2.5 million to $2.8 million along the 1.2km of this Marine Pde, overlooking the upper Waitemata Harbour, just five or six minutes to Queen St.
At Mt Maunganui, Marine Pde stretches 4km, with the Pacific Ocean on one side and real estate on the other.
Unlike Herne Bay, this is "holiday coastal" mixed with standard residential, where houses and apartments stand over the white sand and surf of one of the country's classic R and R spots.
It's difficult to read too much into the figures because sales have been so low, but Mt Maunganui - weighed down by a market saturated with apartments that sold at silly prices through the boom - has obviously struggled.
Just 18 sales were recorded during the 15 months, nine of them apartments and three of them at mortgagee auctions.
Sixteen of the properties sold for less than CVs set in mid-2009, suggesting a continuous slide from the 2007 peaks until the end of March; the average decline was 23 per cent, with several properties dropping more than 30 per cent against CV.
Two examples for those who believe in the fairy tale of guaranteed capital gain in residential property: A 146sq m apartment that sold for $1.3 million in December 2007, a couple of months after the market began its slide, was turned over for $1 million in April last year -
26 per cent below the 2009 CV. Add the costs of selling, and that's a loss of close to $350,000 in 28 months.
A 230sq m home-and-income property, sold for $2.5 million in January 2005 as the market was firing, fetched the same price in April last year. That represents a paper loss of more than $50,000 over five years when selling expenses are taken into account - and rather more when inflation is included.
Up in Herne Bay, things have been more comforting to Marine Pde home-owners, with three of the five sales sitting comfortably above the 2008 CV and the worst performance only 8 per cent below it.
One set of property owners are probably cursing their timing - buying for $1.13 million in March 2007 as the boom was flattening out and selling three years later last April for $1.1 million.
But the capital-gain disciples will love the story behind another $1.1 million selling price last November.
Back in April 2003, a month or two into New Zealand's longest-running real estate boom, this property sold for $542,000. No doubt there were decorating and renovating costs, but doubling your price in seven years is not a bad endorsement of the value of bricks and mortar.
* From the New Zealand Herald's quarterly 'Property Report' - a guide to house prices and great places to live.