Nelson’s house prices are now at a record high with the median coming in at $610,000. Photo: File.

Nelson is home to record spring

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Nelson’s real estate market has had a record-breaking spring but analysis conducted by the Nelson Weekly shows that despite more agencies than ever selling homes, it’s still a few scoring the bulk of listings.

With Nelson city reaching a record high median house price of $610,000, compared to $523,000 in November last year we looked at which agencies were most trusted to help homeowners sell.

The price jump also coincides with an increase in properties sold in the $750,000 to $999,999 price range.

Houses sold in this bracket doubled, going from 10.3 per cent in November 2018 to 20.7 per cent in the same month this year, according to REINZ data.

There are 23 registered real estate companies operating in the Nelson/Tasman region, according to REINZ, the county’s real estate watchdog.

Analysis of TradeMe data for a three week period in early November show that of those, 17 companies had 131 listings.

Summit was the big winner with 33 of those, followed by fellow big players Bayleys with 16 listings, Harcourts with 13 and Ray White with 11.

Most companies charge between 2 to 3% on the house price sale, with some movement at the edges of the spectrum.

Some companies will charge less once a house sale goes over a certain price, often around the $700,000 mark.

Summit Real Estate managing director Allister Nalder says the record house prices come as no surprise and puts it down to record low mortgage rates, along with legislation that requires houses to be improved for tenants.

“Tenants have got better quality homes and capital growth in value.”

While Summit has the most listings and is the largest local real estate company, Allister also says he hopes for a more stable real estate market.

“More modest price increases are good for a local economy – a lot of business does trigger off it … Rapidly growing prices is not necessarily a good thing.”

The next in line after Ray White was Haven and Mike Pero with six each, followed by Tall Poppy and Remax on five and Kat Campbell & Co on four.

However, despite the seemingly crowded real estate market Kat Campbell reckons there is still more than enough business to go around.

She recently started her own company – breaking away from Mike Pero Real Estate.

“There are always enough houses to go around. Some people have more of a share than others.”

She says part of the motivation was to be more flexible and to allow her to give back more to the community, such as volunteering a day at Nelson Tasman Hospice for every 10 sales they do.

However, she isn’t surprised at the house price trend.

“I don’t know when it is going to stop. Surely it has to even out at some stage.”

Kat remembers when she first started in the industry and a two-bedroom unit in the city would cost $150,000. Now it was closer to $500,000.

“It’s a little bit crazy, I don’t know when it is going to stop.”