Wellington house sales: Buyers 'getting tired', survey shows

Only a quarter of real estate agents surveyed said they were seeing more people at auctions in November. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Wellington home buyers are "taking a rest" from auctions and open homes, survey results from real estate agents have shown.

Independent economist Tony Alexander has been surveying New Zealand real estate agents on a monthly basis since July, asking them about activity levels and trends they had observed in the housing market.

The REINZ and Tony Alexander report for November surveyed 36 real estate agents in Wellington, and only a quarter of them reported they had seen more people at auctions than previous months.

The survey results showed buyers were 'taking a rest'. Photo / Mark Mitchell

This was lower than the national average, in which 42 per cent of 369 agents reported more people at auctions.

Similarly, while 83 per cent of Wellington agents reported more people at open homes in September, that had dropped to 36 per cent in November.

Alexander said the results showed Wellingtonian home buyers were still interested but getting fatigued by the process of home buying.

"I think maybe some of the buyers in Wellington are just getting tired of the frenzy – that's quite a drop from 83 per cent of agents saying more people at open homes to 36 per cent now."

He said the process of looking for a home could be exhausting and expensive, and the survey reflected a nationwide trend of fatigue among home buyers.

"Traipsing around and getting themselves ready to go to an auction, paying the money ... it's a pretty expensive business if you have to keep going again and again and again," Alexander said.

"Overall, the country-wide results are just showing that buyers are going to take a rest basically.

"That pull back on open homes [in Wellington], that's quite large – it must be one of the larger pull backs."

The data also showed Wellington was a market driven more by the first-home buyer than by the investor, he said.

"Net 64 per cent of agents in Wellington are saying they're seeing first-home buyers - that's above average - and a net 25 per cent saying they're seeing more investors.

"The first-time buyers are above average and the investors a little bit below average."