If you have been scrolling through houses for sale in Whangārei, you will have noticed how wide the range is. The same week can bring a $420,000 do-up in Raumanga and a $1.2 million home on an acre in Maunu, and it is hard to know from the listings alone where your budget actually lands. So I went back through the last twelve months of sales across the city, nearly 900 homes between Kamo in the north, Maunu in the west and Onerahi on the harbour, and sorted them by price. Here is what each budget bought in Whangārei over the past year, and which suburbs to look in.
The shape of the market first
The middle of the Whangārei market sits at about $610,000. A quarter of all house sales in the past year were under $500,000, four in ten were between $500,000 and $700,000, just under a quarter were between $700,000 and $900,000, and about one in eight were over $900,000. That tells you two things. There is still a genuine entry-level market here, which most of Auckland no longer has, and the bulk of the city’s homes change hands in a fairly narrow band either side of $600,000. Suburb matters, though, so each band below comes with the places to look. The suburb medians are on my Whangārei house prices page and update monthly.
Under $500,000
About one in four homes sold in Whangārei in the past year went for less than $500,000, and the typical one was a three-bedroom house of around 90 to 100 square metres on a section of about 750 square metres. Two-bedroom homes and units are common in this band too. Most are older houses, often weatherboard or fibre-cement, and many need work, which is exactly why they are priced where they are. You will find most of them in Raumanga, where the median sits around $445,000, and in parts of Tikipunga, Kensington and Onerahi. This is first-home territory and investor territory, and the good ones go quickly.
$500,000 to $700,000
This is where Whangārei does most of its business. Four in ten sales landed here, and the typical home was a three-bedroom house of around 120 square metres on a 750 to 800 square metre section, with a fair number of four-bedroom homes creeping in at the top of the band. At this price you move from doing-up to moving-in. Think a tidy 1970s or 1980s family home in Tikipunga or Onerahi, a solid three-bedroom in Kensington or Kamo, or a newer but smaller home in a subdivision. Tikipunga, Onerahi and Kensington all have medians right around $580,000, so a $600,000 budget puts you squarely in the middle of those suburbs, and at the top of the band you are starting to reach Kamo, whose median is about $724,000.
$700,000 to $900,000
Just under a quarter of the year’s sales were in this band, and the step up is noticeable. The typical home is now 170 to 180 square metres, three or four bedrooms, usually with two bathrooms and a double garage, on a section around 800 square metres. This is the family-home band: renovated character homes in Regent and Kensington, the better streets of Kamo, newer homes in the subdivisions on the city’s edges, and the lower end of Maunu. Kamo and Regent, with medians of roughly $724,000 and $760,000, are the natural places to look, and harbour-view homes in Onerahi start appearing here as well.
$900,000 and above
Only about one home in eight sold for more than $900,000, and the ones that did were a different kind of property. The typical sale was a four-bedroom home of around 230 square metres, often on a section of a thousand square metres or more, and a good number of them were on lifestyle-sized land on the rural edges. Maunu, with a median of about $882,000, is the suburb where a $900,000-plus budget is normal rather than exceptional, and the same money also buys harbour frontage in Onerahi, a large modern home in the newer Kamo and Tikipunga subdivisions, or a home with land beyond the city boundary. This is also the band where Whangārei starts to compete with the coast, so it is worth reading what the same money buys at Whangārei Heads or towards Waipu before you decide.
Sections
Bare sections sold for a median of about $435,000 over the year, which, with build costs where they are, is why most buyers in the under-$700,000 bands buy an existing home rather than build. If you are set on a new build, my guide to house and land packages covers what to check, and the lifestyle block and section guide covers the land side.
How to use these numbers
They are a map, not a valuation. A well-presented home in a good street will sell above its band and a tired one below it, and the bands move with the market. If you want to see what is available right now, the houses for sale in Whangārei page is kept current, and if you need to sell a home to fund the move, I sell from Whangārei to Mangawhai with no upfront fees and no fee at all unless your home sells. A free appraisal will tell you where your own home sits in these bands, which is usually the first number a buyer actually needs.