What Muriwai's surprise CV increase can tell us about rates and valuations

RNZ News

a day ago

Auckland's Muriwai Beach. File photo
Photo:
RNZ / Tom Taylor
Some residents in Auckland's Muriwai were shocked this week to discover that, while the city as a whole had house values decline 9 percent on average in the latest council valuations, theirs increased 12 percent.
Muriwai Community Association co-chair Clare Bradley told RNZ it was tough for the "tiny" suburb, which had been significantly changed by the council buying out properties damaged by 2023's storm.
She said about 80 of the roughly 700 homes in the suburb had been bought by council.
Their house values having lifted while the rest of the city's fell means they are likely to pay a proportionately higher amount of rates.
Commentators say the situation may be a good example of the many moving parts that go into the complex system of valuing properties.
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What goes into a council valuation, anyway?
Auckland Council chief financial officer Ross Tucker said the council went through a robust process to determine valuations.
"It's a really defined methodology that looks at all the data, and has that reviewed by qualified valuers. There's a full audit process around it."
He said it was systematic and "not a question of just looking at some sales data and putting it in a spreadsheet".
The council would use two points in time - 2021 when the last valuations were issued, and 2024, when the new ones were updated.
The valuation is made up of capital value, the price the property was likely to sell for on the market on that day, the land value the land would attract if it was sold bare, and the improvement value, which was the difference.
So why is Muriwai so different from its neighbours?
Tucker said the valuation process would not consider the transactions in which council had bought properties in Muriwai.
"It's only pure market transactions. So what we've seen is in 2021 the average residential CV was about $1.2 million, $200,000 less than the Auckland average… now we look at 2024 and the market sales at that point, we haven't seen any individual sales over that relevant time period, not a single sale, that's gone for less than the 2021 CV. Everything has been above CV.
"If people are talking about a decrease from the current CVs, there's no evidence for us to support that."
Muriwai's values had increased from a little below the Auckland average to slightly above, potentially boosted by more people working remotely.
There was also not a lot of vacant land in Muriwai, he said, so even rundown baches were valuable because of their land.
"The only way to get in there and build a fantastic Muriwai dream house is to buy one of those old baches."
Many people who had received money from council for their properties were also trying to buy in the area, he said. "There are very few properties on the market, people are holding on. People aren't selling."
Does the size of the market matter?
Bradley expressed surprise that Muriwai was dealt with as a separate market, given its size.
Tucker said the number of sales was relatively small compared to many other suburbs in Auckland.
"We have to work with the sales data that's there. In Mount Eden or in other bigger areas, Howick, there's lots of sales data you can more easily look at the trends and you've got a bigger statistical base."
Cotality's chief property economist Kelvin Davidson said that made it trickier to find comparable sales for properties.
It would not be hard to find something to compare a typical three-bedroom home in Grey Lynn to, he said, but Muriwai's diverse housing stock with fewer sales made it harder to do that.
Davidson said by CoreLogic's measure, Muriwai's values were down about 2 percent.
Tucker said while that data was different, council valuations had to rely on its own methodology, evidence and processes.
"It's about an auditable verifiable objective method and it's really important we do that to make sure we're setting rates objectively and there's a fair comparison… it's doing the best we can with the data set.
"The different data sets will give different outcome. But if you look at the individual sales, none of them have been below CV so even with a small data set it's extremely unlike that the market values are below the old CVs in Muriwai."
But why does the value of your home affect the rates you pay?
The total rates bill the council decides to collect from homeowners each year is split across all the properties in the city.
But the split is not even - more expensive places tend to pay more in rates.
Whether you pay the same proportion of the total bill as you did in the last valuation round depends on how your property's valuation moves compared to everyone else's.
If you own an Auckland property that has dropped in value by more than 9 percent, you will probably have less of an increase in rates than people whose property has increased in value by dropped by less than 9 percent, or even increased.
Davidson said that could be a point of contention for Muriwai ratepayers but they could challenge the valuations if they wanted to.
Why don't rates bills drop when values do?
The valuations don't set the overall council rates bill, just how it's apportioned out.
Councils decide how much they need to collect and that can (and usually does) increase even if the value of properties in their area is flat or falling.
Do values affect sales prices?
Not really. The valuations in Auckland, for example, are almost a year old now.
They might have provided a good indication of what a place was worth at this time last year, but things have changed since then.
CoreLogic's data shows that most parts of Auckland have had further prices falls since 2024.
Davidson said people who were in the market for a home would pay attention to CVs but it was generally a better idea to look for more recent sales to get an idea of what the market was doing.
"It's about establishing a fair value now, not what the property might have sold for a year ago when the CVs were 'set'."
Sometimes you can get an idea of how far generally property prices are from their CV in a certain area, but that would still only be a guide.
Is there a better way?
Davidson's colleague Nick Goodall told Nine to Noon there was merit in the idea of shifting away from a dollar-based valuation to a system where properties were grouped into deciles.
Tucker said the current process did require a lot of work, a lot of time and a lot of cost to get to its outcome.
"I'm always keen to find you know ways to do things cheaper for ratepayers, to do things faster, … [but] you've got to make sure that any system is fair and objective, so Aucklanders have confidence that their rates are being sent fairly."
What can you do if you're not happy?
People who think their valuation is incorrect can object.
Tucker said last time there were about 9000 objections across 630,000 ratepaying properties. "It's a pretty small proportion."
He said people who wanted to object needed to be able to show that the number was wrong in May last year, rather than now.
"People go 'well you know something sold in my street just last month at a much different price'. It's not something we can consider for an objection process."
He said people who were struggling to pay their rates should get in touch with council.
As of 1 July, SuperGold cardholders with rates higher than $2000 a year and income up to $45,000 will be able to receive the maximum rates rebate of $805.