The year started off with an influx of buyers, ranging from home buyers to investors scrambling to get into the market, which in turn has pushed prices up due to the competition averaging 10 offers/bidders per property. This has meant, approximately another 10% rise in prices in the last 3 months alone.
Any land over 600sqm is being looked at as having development potential based on the new unitary plan and we have seen an even larger rise in the price of these types of properties, more in the vicinity of 20% due to the competition amongst buyers. There is some talk that the LVRs might cause a correction in the market especially with investment properties and development sites. We have seen a few cases of this already where people have been scrambling to buy before their pre-approval expires and others have had to take a back seat based on the new rules, so it will be interesting to see how this pans out.