The overheated housing market in Auckland has boiled over into lifestyle properties in the wider Auckland region and further afield.
Photo: 123RF
The median price for lifestyle blocks in the rural fringes around Auckland rose more than 17 percent for the three months to December, compared with the previous year.
The new median price was $958,000, a record for the region, and the increase compared with a lift of just one percent in the national median price.
Real Estate Institute rural spokesperson Brian Peacocke said sales of lifestyle properties, especially around Auckland's southern edge, had also reached new levels.
"And it doesn't stop at that. It goes out into the slightly bigger holdings where you've got more acres than the normal lifestyle type scenario," he said.
"Whether that's a spin-off from what's been happening in Auckland City I'm not too sure, but the net result is that there are purchasers coming from that Auckland region down into both the Waikato and the Bay of Plenty, where they consider values to be far better value than what they have in the Auckland region."
He said in the past there had been a similar surge in the Christchurch and Canterbury region, as part of a spin-off from the city's rebuild, although that had since flattened off.
"But Auckland has a mechanism of its own. There seems to be no logic at times, or else whatever's happening defies logic."
