Mosgiel street leads city sales

Mosgiel is the red-hot real estate choice for many people, industry sales figures for the past year show.

The Real Estate Institute of New Zealand was asked by The Star for a list of the 10 most popular streets in Dunedin, sorted by the number of sales.

Gordon Rd in Mosgiel (16 sales) was the street with the highest number of sales from November 1, 2011, to October 31, 2012. Mosgiel's Argyle (11) and Ayr (10) Sts also made the top 10.

Gordon Rd residents spoken to by The Star yesterday said they were surprised the road had topped the list but said there had been a lot of houses on the market in the past two or three years.

One resident said she had been approached twice by people looking to buy her property. Other residents said the location, close to the centre of Mosgiel, and the increasing population made Gordon Rd attractive. Real Estate Institute of New Zealand regional director Liz Nidd said it would be hard to compare the popularity of streets because of their different lengths.

She said what was obvious was the lack of higher-priced homes for sale in Dunedin, with owners of those types of properties holding on to them.

''You are always going to find that the numbers are bigger at the moment in any street that has got cheaper houses, largely because [with] the drop the market took, people further up the market have chosen not to put their houses on the market.''

She said there were a lot of negative stories about the economy but the ''good news story'' in Dunedin was that housing was still affordable.

''It is still a good place to be. A young family can still get a toe in the market.

''A little two to three-bedroom house in Wellington, in a pretty ordinary suburb, you can't get anything for under $350,000 and Auckland is even worse. Christchurch is horrendous because there is such a shortage of sound property available to the market, so we really are sitting quite pretty.

''For a beautiful city we have got a good story in terms of our ability to get our young people into homes.''

She said there was always huge demand for suburbs such as Roslyn, Maori Hill and St Clair but there had not been a huge amount of property coming on the market in those areas.

There were 2219 residential house sales in Dunedin in the year that ended October 31, with the vast majority selling for under $300,000.

In October, 51% of the 202 sales in Dunedin were for properties that sold for less than $200,000.