New data released by realestate.co.nz this week highlighted “striking million-dollar price gaps” between the highest and lowest-priced suburbs across New Zealand’s main centres.
The district-level data reflected the annual average asking prices of suburbs with ten or more new listings in 2024.
In the Dunedin area, the highest-ranked suburb was North Taieri with an average asking price of $1,767,643, followed by East Taieri, Maori Hill, St Leonards and St Clair.
The lowest was South Dunedin with $426,691, followed by Calton Hill, Forbury, Caversham and Middlemarch.
Auckland, comparatively, had a price gap of $3.61 million between its highest and lowest-priced suburbs in 2024, while Wellington and Christchurch also had price differences exceeding $1m last year.
The data illustrated the types of properties that were available in the market, with lifestyle locations and what would be considered “premier” suburbs among the likes of Maori Hill and St Clair featuring in the upper end, and a “proliferation of older stock” and a lot of early 1900s houses at the lower.
It should instil confidence in prospective buyers that, “whatever your budget, you’ve got an opportunity to own your own property”.
“One of the good things about Dunedin is that you have actually got the capabilities, regardless of what your budget is within reason, you’ve got the ability to find something.
“So I think it’s a real drawcard of Dunedin that if you are at the lower end in terms of the price range and you’ve got $400,000 or $450,000 to spend, you can find a property to purchase.
“And conversely, if you’ve got $2m or $3m, you can obviously find something at what would be considered the upper end of the range in Dunedin as well, and that’s not the case in every centre in the country.”
NZ Property Solutions director Lyndon Fairbairn said the numbers reported at the lower end were very affordable from a national perspective.
He was unsure if the figures would be a reflection on this year, but expected vendors’ expectations of price point to be at least on par if not slightly higher, and there would be an upward trend across all suburbs.
They had received “record demand” this month for entry-level properties, and were also seeing sales for those at the higher end.
“The inquiries at the higher end have been really, really positive, a lot stronger than they were three or four months ago.
“So we’re seeing that on an inquiry level, at all phases of values.”
