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Ashburton is one of the few districts across New Zealand where home values still show positive growth.A strong rural economy and continued urban drift from Christchurch are likely reasons for local house prices bucking the national trend.The average house value in Ashburton increased by 2.1%, from $528,484 to $539,524 while values in New Zealand fell by 13.3% in the last year, according to Quotable Value’s April House Price Index.Values in Waimate were also up, increasing 2.3% in the past 12 months from $433,892 to $443,990, while values in Timaru fell 0.5% to $517,359 in the same period.The only other areas where values continued to grow were Mackenzie (3.9%), Queenstown (5.3%), Otorohanga (6.5%), and Wairoa (0.3%).Local Quotable Value (QV) senior consultant Olivia Brownie said South and Mid Canterbury’s relatively strong rural sector was one explanation for the region’s resilient housing market.“Ashburton tends not to be as significantly affected by some factors currently effecting main centres – probably due to it being more of a family-home market, with also a large population of retirees, who typically look to pay more “realistic” sale prices.“Ashburton is also still coming off some good urban drift, with population growth from out of Christchurch contributing towards more resilient house values.”However, Brownie said Canterbury lagged behind the rest of the country in the property cycle.“We may yet see Ashburton, Waimate and Mackenzie join the rest of the country in the coming months. But these districts are also driven by different economic factors to many of the main centres,” she said.Corelogic chief economist Kelvin Davidson said home values in Ashburton had “held up better” than almost all other parts of the country.The relative affordability of homes in Ashburton would be one reason for this, he said.Davidson said overall home values in Ashburton had not experienced the rampant increase seen in other areas. As a result values were less likely to fall, he said.Ashburton Property Brokers branch manager Murray Young said house sales had dropped by as much as 40% in some areas, compared to the same period last year.However, last year’s sales were high, he said.“The top end of the market is still quite strong.”A delay in some building projects and higher building costs had made existing homes more attractive.There had been some good farm sales and lifestyle properties had been selling well, but this had slowed a little in the last month, Young said.A lot of sales were conditional on the buyer selling, which wasn’t the case 12 to 18 months ago, he said.The number of first homebuyers had dropped off. Young said this was thanks to higher interest rates, tighter lending conditions from banks, and buyers waiting to see if prices would lower.Investors were “light on the ground” and those in the market were hoping to pick up a bargain.Young was upbeat about the next few months and expected to see more buyer activity.The change to the loan-to-value ratio would “free up more money from the banks” and there was an indication that interest rates had peaked or nearly peaked for this cycle, he said.
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