New Zealand house prices rose at their fastest annual pace in more than nine years in November, although there are some signs the pace of growth may be slowing in the overheated Auckland market.

The average value of a New Zealand home jumped 15 per cent to $555,729 in November compared with the year-earlier month, Quotable Value said.

Values in Auckland rose 24 per cent to $931,807.

Auckland’s property market has been on a tear as migrants and investors compete for limited housing stock.

That’s prompted the government and the Reserve Bank to introduce new measures to quell the risk from a housing bubble.

“Home values in Auckland are still increasing but at a slower rate than last month and it appears new rules to curb investors along with restrictions on the capital flow out of China have led to an easing in the market,” said QV’s Andrea Rush.

The number of houses sold at auction in Auckland has fallen, with some agencies reporting clearance rates as low as 30 per cent, when they had regularly been around 85 per cent, the agency said.

“So far we are not seeing any drastic price easing in the statistics, but we can definitely say that activity is well down on previous months,” said QV valuer James Wilson.

“Whether this will correlate to values decreasing across the board remains to be seen. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that value levels among some categories of housing, in particular investment housing stock may have fallen.”

VALUES IN NOVEMBER COMPARED TO A YEAR EARLIER:

• Nationally $555,729- up 15 per cent
• Auckland $931,807 – up 24 per cent
• Hamilton $435,848 – up 19 per cent
• Tauranga $525,758 – up 16 per cent
• Wellington $558,211 – up 3.9 per cent
• Christchurch $480,464 – up 2.9 per cent
• Dunedin $306,614 – up 5.1 per cent