Twelve year savings needed for Tauranga deposit

Property prices in Tauraga are still on the rise. File Image. SunLive.

House prices in Tauranga rose again in March, with a small drop in February now looking like an anomaly.

CoreLogic's latest report shows that house prices bounced back by 2.5 per cent in March and that it takes over 12 years to save the average deposit needed to buy a home in Tauranga.

The rise comes after a 1.5 per cent drop in February which could have been indicative of an easing in the current rate of property growth.

However, CoreLogic's House Price Index shows that the rise fully reversed the February dip and took Tauranga's values up to a 2.4 per cent rise over the past three months.

'As we thought would be the case, Tauranga's small dip in average values in February was fully reversed in March with the level now just short of $898,000,” explains CoreLogic head of New Zealand research Nick Goodall.

'That is 16.2 per cent higher than a year ago, which equates to a rise of more than $125,000.”

Nick goes on to explain how Tauranga is the least affordable of New Zealand's main centres for households on the average income.

'This problem is acute for first home buyers,” Nick says. 'Our latest reading showed that it took 12.1 years to save the average deposit in Tauranga, and that will have only worsened in the past three months.”

The national figure for time taken to save the average deposit for a house currently sits at nine years, leaving Tauranga far above the national norm.

The same report shows a surprising drop in values for houses in Gisborne over the past month but warns that the results from Tauranga so far this year show how one month of data does not necessarily represent a trend.

Nationwide values increased by a further 2.2 per cent in March, which takes the annual growth rate to 16.1 per cent, the highest rate of growth since January 2006.

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3 comments

So.....

Posted on 09-04-2021 12:47 | By The Professor

......buy a house outside of Tauranga and save 3.1 years when getting a deposit together - easy really. It will take even less time to save a deposit if Government build cheap flats and if first-time buyers buy outside the expensive regions and lower their expectations - it takes a while to get to where mum and dad go to!!


Home ownership.........

Posted on 10-04-2021 08:54 | By groutby

....is concerning, depending on who you listen to, investors, 1st time buyers, economists, real estate , whoever, we always get a different 'take' on the property situation here....which makes it confusing in particular for 1st time purchasers to reach a knowledgable conclusion... I also think (without wishing to state the rather obvious) the property market will not slow short term, the mortgage rates will remain stable at least short term and there is no clear reason barring a world 'event' to think there will be any sort of property 'price crash' looming. I cannot conclude if it is easier or more difficult to buy a property now or say, 30 years ago due to so much conflicting information. Banks are nervous about lending up to 90% without some sort of government guarantee at least in part, would that help?...or is there no desire to?


It's a market.

Posted on 11-04-2021 13:27 | By morepork

Almost inevitably, every time you try to manipulate a market, the outcome is disappointing. Yes, we must build more houses, but we need to balance that by stopping the increase in population. There should be a 3 - 5 year moratorium on immigration, while supply of houses gets a chance to catch up to demand.


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