Falling house prices slowly entrenching

This drop reverses the 1.4% growth in March.

At a more granular level, the old Auckland City Council area, which has the highest average value of the super city at $1.72 million, had the largest fall in values, of 2.5% over April. Both Waitakere (1.9%) and Manukau (1.5%) also experienced noticeable drops. Meanwhile some growth persisted in Franklin (0.6%) and values in Rodney fell by a very minor 0.1%.

Christchurch is the only main centre to show any real resistance from the weakening market, with values appearing to plateau rather than fall recently.

However, the average values of Christchurch and Dunedin properties have meant the two cities drifting further apart. This is a revealing change given Dunedin’s average value was greater than Christchurch as recently as September last year, says Nick Goodall, CoreLogic’s research head.