New Zealand’s house values ended 2009 just 4.9 per cent below the late-2007 peak, having been as much as 9.6 per cent below the peak last April, Quotable Value’s (QV’s) residential index for December showed yesterday .
While the recovery was led by the urban centres, QV is now seeing signs of confidence returning to the provincial markets.
For the whole of 2009, New Zealand house values rose 2.8 per cent, with an average sale price of NZ404,671 (S$416,390) in December, up from NZ$393,373 in November, when prices were 5.9 per cent below the peak.
The year 2009 had shown a dramatic and somewhat unexpected level of turnaround in house values, QV said in publishing the December figures yesterday.
After reaching their peak in late 2007, house values dropped steadily throughout 2008.
At the beginning of 2009, two camps developed – those that considered the market had much further to fall, and those that considered it was near the bottom, and perhaps heading towards a good time to buy.
The property market was strongly influenced by consumer confidence, and as consumer confidence began to grow in 2009, so did property values in the main centers, QV valuation manager Glenda Whitehead said.
Driven by the main centres, nationwide values rose 5.1 per cent between the market bottom in April and the end of the year.
For the main urban areas, the rise since April was 6.5 per cent, taking values in those areas to just 3.9 per cent below their peak.
Source: Business Times, 12 Jan 2010
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