Market finally shows signs of cooling

CoreLogic’s House Price Index (HPI) shows the annual rate of growth rose to 20.5%, up from 18.4% last month.

However the annual measure is impacted by base effects, where a year ago economic activity, including the housing market, had stalled as the nation moved through the Covid related lockdowns.

Research head, Nick Goodall, says “In the past few weeks both the Government and RBNZ have released house price forecasts with expectations of a significant reduction in growth over the coming months.

The HPI, which analyses a rolling three months of sales data, provides some evidence of this, while analysis of CoreLogic preliminary sales data goes a step further, illustrating the most recent sales are not performing at the same level as those earlier in the year.