Ashley Church: property commentator on Aucklanders receiving long-awaited property valuations in June

After years of delay, Aucklanders can expect to receive their property valuations early next month.

Auckland Council says it expected to deliver the new valuations, commonly known as capital values (CVs), in the week of June 9 to June 13.

Property commentator Ashley Church says it's unlikely this will make a difference in overall valuations.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ever do for see Ellen.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
After a huge delay, Aucklands are finally going to get
their updated property valuations. Auckland Council says the new valuations
are going to hit your m box in the week
of June nine. The last cvs were set during the
height of the house price boom in twenty twenty one,
so yeah, it's going to be a bit of a
thing that's going to happen to your inbox. Property commentator
Ashley Churches with me. Now, hey, Ashley got hea, why

(00:22):
has it taken so long?

Speaker 1 (00:25):
It's a really good question. The last time they were
done was July twenty twenty one, so coming up four
years they're normally three, so that's quite a bit of
extra time. Having said that, I don't think it's going
to make a heck of a lot of difference to
valuations over all, because they haven't moved all that much
in the past twelve months.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Haven't they though, Because I mean, you're hearing all these
yarns about people buying houses. For example, we bought we
bought when we moved to Auckland. We bought a house
that was worth We paid less than they had paid
in twenty eighteen for it. You have massive drops going on,
so why wouldn't it reflect that.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
So because most of those drops that you're talking about
put down in some context Auckland prices. And it's really
important to understand by the way that when I talk
about Auckland, generically it's a bit unsea it because there's
different movements in different parts of the city. But let's
trade it as a whole. Auckland prices as a whole.
Most of that drop, which has been about twenty two
percent since it's height in twenty twenty one, happened prior

(01:18):
to last year. So last year they kind of tape
it off and just out there. In fact, last year
there was some expectation that they're actually going to climb again,
and they look like we're going to for a while
and then and then of course we had a couple
of other things that hit us, and the market's just
wallowed where it is. But there's there's indications that it slow,
indications that's going to rise. But as I say, in

(01:39):
the last twelve months hasn't made much difference. Also worth
noting that even though it's druped twenty two percent since
twenty twenty one, I are still fifteen percent up on
where they were five years ago, So you know, a
little bit of good news there, but it does mean
that the valuations that people receive in July are going
to be significantly lower than what they were in that
last valuation.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
So what is it going to do in terms of
like that, I think everybody's expecting, yay, my rates increase
or the amount that I pay in rates is going
to go down?

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Is it though? Na? And this is a really interesting
thing because people don't understand really important to understand that
when the whole point of the RBS is for the
council to determine, on average what it can charge your
household by way of rates to fund the various service
as a council provides to the city. So that amount
doesn't change whatever it is it is. So if there's
a decrease in your valuation and that decreases roughly the

(02:29):
same as other houses in your neighborhood, then your rates
are going to stay wherever they would have been anywhere.
It's not going to make any difference to them whatsoever. Conversely,
if there's an increase in the increase is consistent with
the other houses in your neighborhood the same appliance. So
just because your rates go down doesn't mean that you're sorry.
Just because your health price doesn't go down and your
evaluation doesn't go down, this doesn't necessarily mean that your

(02:50):
rates are going to go down as well. It's to
do with what's happening in the city as a whole,
not what's happening to your individual value, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
What are they actually taking into account, Ashley? I mean,
obviously they're taking into account anything that you do to
add value, like should you add an extra room or
a dowage or a pool or whatever.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
But what else, Well, I'm probably the wrong person to
usk because I'm quite cynical about our V as a
tool for anything other than setting rates. So as a
way of council setting rates, they're a great tool, really
good and relatively inexpensive wave councils determining what they can
charge an individual household. It's a way of determining what
your house is worth. I've been of the view for
a long time they're not much better than toilet paper.

(03:26):
And the reason I say that is because nobody comes
to your home, nobody looks at your innovations, and nobody
looks to see what condition your homes, and nobody looks
to see if you've made an extension to your home.
All they are doing is looking at what your last
valuation was, what the changes in the market have been.
They stick a fewer logarithms than they're based on some
assumptions that they make and volor they come up with
this number, so you know, real estate agents tend to

(03:47):
use them as a way of determining what houses are
actually worth. I'm pretty cynical about that because they're really not.
And when you look at what houses are selling for
relative to even fresh Harvey straight after it's been issued,
they tend to be quite a big disconnect. So I
wouldn't be too concerned about what your say is relative
to what your house is actually worth.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Ashley, it's good to talk to you. Thank you about you.
Look after yourself, Ashley Church, property commentator.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
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