Christchurch Real Estate Update - August 2022

The spring real estate market continues to improve along with our general optimism for the season ahead. At the coal face we are starting to see more investors and first-home buyers coming back to our open homes. It feels like confidence is returning to the market and it’s important to remember when reading the media articles that Christchurch is quite unique compared with other major cities. Our house prices do not fluctuate to the same level as they do in Auckland. This is why Christchurch is easily the best city to purchase property in... and I’m not biased at all :)

The biggest shift of note is the number of offers that are subject to sale. This is something we haven't seen a lot of over the last 2 years due to FOMO from buyers. Now literally every multi-offer I have presented has at least 1 or 2 offers subject to sale. These offers are not ideal for our sellers because if the buyers house doesn't sell, then the contract will collapse and our seller has to start again. Auction is still the best method of sale as the winner of the auction is unconditional.

In saying that, we are not seeing many of the subject to sale offers collapse at this stage. In years gone by we would sometimes get offers subject to sale stacked up 3 to 4 deep, meaning that if the first offer failed to sell, then the other 3 offers would collapse. The domino affect!

And so my pick for September is for our investors and first home buyers. For investors, we are seeing some terrific, well-priced house & land packages coming to market. The rental returns are good and the future capital gains will continue to rise in the next 5-to-10-year period. I have heard of investors looking to sell off their older-style rental properties in favour of new homes. This is a good option as first home buyers can then find reasonably priced older homes to begin their property journey.

So, if you are thinking of buying an investment property, or your first home, now is a great time, as we have potentially reached the bottom of the house price cycle. I don’t have a crystal ball and maybe it's the spring optimism in the air, but the data and first-hand experience give us a good read on where things are heading!