Upon visiting Auckland this week and even before speaking with a group of Barfoot and Thompson real estate agents of an evening in Newmarket the discussions I had with many people centred around the housing market and how homes are selling at auctions for far more than they had been expecting. A few more anecdotes were thrown my way regarding the presence of Chinese buyers.

In the survey of last week I added a couple of questions quickly just before sending it out regarding whether agents were noticing more or fewer foreign buyers, and if so where they came from. The net outcome was zero and I am unsure how to interpret that so let’s ignore it. But the proportions of foreign buyers by source did yield some useful information.

Nationwide if buyers come from offshore then 27% appear to come from the UK, 24% from China, 22% from Australia, then a mish mash after that. For Auckland the proportions were 45% China, 18% UK, 10% Australia.

However, had I had enough time to design the questions properly I’d have been able to get more useful information regarding specifically the proportion of total sales which appear to be going to offshore buyers, first home buyers, and investors (from wherever). That is what will be in the next survey which will go out to agents on March 11 evening. Then finally we will get a fairly good view as to the role which each of these groups is playing in housing markets nationwide and on a regional basis.

Speaking of China, on Monday I will release two papers on China. The first will be my monthly Growing With China publication. It will contain the usual examination of China’s economy and trade data between NZ and China (they now take 16.8% of our goods exports by value and sent 38% extra holiday-makers our way last year). I’ll also have comments from NZ Trade and Enterprise Regional Director for China Rod McKenzie.