Its official: the average Auckland house price has hit $1 million:
The average value of an Auckland home has passed the $1 million mark for the first time.
Quotable Value's monthly house price index for for August shows the average in Auckland is now $1,013,632 - up from July's figure of $992,000.
The Auckland market grew 15.9 percent in the last year, and 6.1 percent over the past three months, QV spokeswoman Andrea Rush said.
Values there are now 85.5 percent higher than the previous peak of 2007. When adjusted for inflation values rose 15.4 percent over the past year and are 57.5 percent above the 2007 peak.
Landed Boomers will be popping champagne, but in the long term it spells disaster. Auckland is now a city where ordinary people can no longer afford to live, which means that people will leave and businesses will follow them. There's already some evidence of younger Aucklanders fleeing the city in favour of places where they can have a normal life. There's also the crazy situation that "Auckland house" is now one of the country's highest-paid occupations, paying almost as much as being an MP (which means those MPs who own Auckland investment properties must be creaming it). Which is going to make for some interesting careers advice...
The government has responded by announcing an extra $25 million for social housing in Auckland - or about enough to buy 25 houses. Compared to the scale of the problem its a pathetic effort. But once again the aim is to simply generate a headline rather than to actually do anything meaningful. Unfortunately, families can't live in government press releases, but I guess National no longer considers that to be its problem.
