Auckland market sees strongest January for four years

"In January we sold more properties in the month than we have since 2007, prices reached their highest average ever for the month, new listings were up 15.1% and we sold double the number of million dollar homes than we did last January," said managing director Peter Thompson.

"It was an extremely positive start to the year."

Thompson said that while the traditional dip in activity over Christmas, New Year and annual holiday breaks was present in the trading figures, on every key measure January 2012 was "significantly" ahead of the year earlier.

"The average sales price at $529,768 was up 2.7%, sales numbers at 683 were up 21.3% and new listings at 1031 were up 15.1%."