Property prices in Mt Albert have moved ahead of most parts of the country over the last decade, and a higher rates bill from next year is the likely result for most home-owners.
Auckland Council rating values won’t be adjusted until July 2018, but the process to set new valuations is well advanced.
The city’s rating system is based on capital values (in this case, the market value of properties at July 1, 2017) and council specialists have been working with QV and LandMass to decide what individual properties are worth.
Those valuations will be sent to property owners next month and will become integral to the rates we pay in the 2018/2019 rating year.
Based on sales from the three months to the end of May, QV statistics show Mt Albert prices are up around 48 per cent since the last review (effective from July 1, 2014) – a jump in three short years that has seen the average local price move from something like $720,000 to almost $1.1m.
So what does that mean – that our rates will climb by close to 50 per cent from the 2018 rating year?
Fortunately, no. But they will certainly rise, and the likelihood is they will increase by more than the average across Auckland, though there will be variations from property to property.
Mayor Phil Goff has already given notice of a 2.5 per cent rate increase for all the city’s 550,000 residential properties and the indications are that it may even be a little more.
But that’s just the annual base adjustment; on top of that, the three-yearly capital value change can move the final figure significantly for individual properties.
Ratepayers in suburbs where values have risen by the average of around 40 per cent since the 2014 review will generally end up paying just the base adjustment (around 2.5 per cent). And some of those in suburbs where values haven’t moved so much may even pay less from 2018.
But the areas of the city where prices have risen most over the last three years will end up with capital values perhaps 46-55 per cent above current levels – and they will shoulder more of the city’s growing rate take.
While the final figures are still to be settled, it does seem that many Mt Albert properties will be landed with capital valuations above the Auckland average – meaning a rate rise above the 2.5 per cent-plus base adjustment.
Increased rates can be the downside to higher prices, but the knowledge that the value of local properties have moved ahead of other suburbs is probably comforting to many home-owners – though of continued dismay to those locked out of the market, of course.
The nationwide spurt in prices since the last recognised market peak in late 2007 has now reached virtually all parts of the country, though the signs are of a general flattening.
And Mt Albert, with 111 per cent average price growth in those 10 years (moving the average value from around $518,000 to its present $1.097m) has done rather better than most – along with New Windsor, Sandringham, Pt Chevalier, Waterview, Kingsland and Morningside.
Bruce Morris
