Queenstown’s property record is hard to ignore
Updated: Aug 24
Property markets are often judged by what has happened over the past year or two. Queenstown looks even more interesting when the lens is widened.
This Staircase analysis of the REINZ House Price Index compares Queenstown-Lakes with New Zealand overall across 33 January to January periods, from 1994 to 2026. The REINZ series covers the whole Queenstown-Lakes District, which includes Wānaka and Arrowtown.
The difference is striking.
Over those 33 years, Queenstown-Lakes recorded an average annual house price index increase of 8.6%, compared with 6.4% nationally.
Queenstown-Lakes recorded price growth in 27 of the 33 years, with only six negative years. New Zealand overall recorded 26 positive years and seven negative years.
And while Queenstown-Lakes has certainly experienced corrections, its long-term record shows a market that recovered from each of them and went on to substantially higher price levels.
A market that has behaved differently
Queenstown-Lakes has not simply followed the New Zealand property market.
Across the 33 annual periods in our analysis, Queenstown-Lakes outperformed the national HPI in 18 years.
Some of the strongest examples came during periods when demand for Queenstown-Lakes property accelerated sharply. In each of these years the national market was also rising, and Queenstown-Lakes rose considerably faster:
Year to January | Queenstown-Lakes | New Zealand | Difference |
2002 | +24.3% | +4.3% | +20.0 pts |
2003 | +31.4% | +13.4% | +18.0 pts |
2004 | +28.8% | +23.7% | +5.1 pts |
2016 | +17.7% | +13.8% | +3.9 pts |
2017 | +25.9% | +13.3% | +12.6 pts |
2019 | +10.9% | +2.8% | +8.1 pts |
There is also a pattern in the down years that is easy to miss. Queenstown-Lakes fell in six of the 33 years and New Zealand fell in seven, but only one of those, 2009, was a down year in both. In five of the six years Queenstown-Lakes fell, the rest of the country was rising.
But perhaps more interesting is what has happened during the most recent property cycle.
New Zealand experienced a significant housing correction following the 2021 peak. The national HPI fell 13.9% in the year to January 2023, the sharpest annual drop in the series. Queenstown-Lakes was still 4.3% higher over the same period.
Queenstown-Lakes then rose another 7.7% in the year to January 2024, followed by 0.4% in 2025.
By January 2026, Queenstown-Lakes was up 9.0% over the previous year. New Zealand overall was still down 0.7%.
More recent figures point the same way. Over the 12 months to July 2026, the most recent REINZ data available, Queenstown-Lakes rose 8.0% while New Zealand fell 0.4%.
That divergence has now held for four consecutive years, and it is difficult to dismiss as short term noise.
Why has Queenstown-Lakes been different?
There is no single explanation.
The factors usually cited are a constrained physical footprint, limited developable land, high infrastructure and construction costs, a strong visitor economy, and demand from purchasers whose buying decisions are not always tied to local household incomes.
Queenstown-Lakes also draws demand from across New Zealand and from overseas.
Against that demand sits a market where adding large volumes of new housing is neither simple nor cheap.
This does not mean Queenstown-Lakes prices rise every year. There were declines in 2000, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2020, and the deepest of them, in 2009, took 11.3% off the index. What the longer history shows is that those downturns have been infrequent compared with the number of years in which prices rose.
The long-term result is substantial
The difference between an 8.6% average annual change and a 6.4% national average may not initially look enormous.
Over several decades, it becomes significant.
The Queenstown-Lakes HPI increased from 321 in January 1993 to 4,260 in January 2026. That is a 13.3-fold increase in the index.
Over the same period, the New Zealand HPI increased from 511 to 3,583, a 7.0-fold increase.
Past performance cannot tell us what Queenstown-Lakes will do next. But more than three decades of data gives us something considerably more useful than a short-term forecast: evidence of how the market has behaved through multiple economic, interest rate and property cycles.
What that looks like in dollars
An index measures movement rather than money, so it is worth putting the same period into prices people recognise.
In January 1993 the median house sold in Queenstown-Lakes for $136,000. In January 2026 the median was $1,720,000. Nationally over the same 33 years, the median went from $112,000 to $755,000.
Those medians work out to 12.6 times for Queenstown-Lakes and 6.7 times nationally, slightly below the 13.3 and 7.0 the index gives. The difference is not an error in either figure. A median is the middle price of whatever happened to sell that month, so it moves when the mix of properties changes as well as when prices change. The index is built to strip that out, which makes it the more accurate measure of price movement and the reason this analysis uses it. The medians are the more familiar number, and they tell the same story.
Average annual growth compared with compound annual growth rate
Measured as a compound annual growth rate rather than the simple average, Queenstown-Lakes grew at approximately 8.2% a year across those 33 years, compared with around 6.1% nationally.
The compound rate is the lower figure of the two because averaging annual percentage changes overstates what actually compounds. Both are nominal, before inflation, and an index tracks price movement rather than an owner’s return: rental income, rates, insurance, maintenance, transaction costs and tax all sit outside it.
Where Queenstown-Lakes sits now
The latest numbers are particularly interesting because Queenstown-Lakes is currently moving differently from much of the country.
While many New Zealand markets are still recovering from the post-2021 correction, Queenstown-Lakes has moved beyond its previous highs, and annual growth to July 2026 was 8.0%.
That does not mean another period of above-average growth is inevitable.
It does mean Queenstown-Lakes has behaved differently from the national market for a very long time, and that a portfolio built entirely on the national cycle has not captured what happened here.
Its combination of constrained supply, a strong visitor economy and a long record of above-national-average growth is unusual among New Zealand districts.
When the past 33 years are placed on one page, the distinction becomes much easier to see.
How the main centres compare
The same 33 years of REINZ data, each city measured against the national index. These are territorial authority series, so Auckland City is not the wider Auckland region and Christchurch City is not Canterbury. The national index grew 7.0 times and averaged 6.4% a year.
Auckland grew 8.6 times, but has fallen in four of the last eight years
Auckland City averaged 7.2% a year and grew 8.6 times, second only to Queenstown-Lakes. The recent record is the outlier: it fell 18.3% in the year to January 2023 and has fallen again in 2025 and 2026. Four of its seven down years have come since 2018.
Tauranga tracked the national average, with bigger swings either way
Tauranga City averaged 6.6% a year and grew 7.1 times, almost exactly the national result. It got there differently. Its best year was +31.7% in 2004 and its worst was −15.4% in 2023, and it recorded eight down years against the national seven.
Dunedin has the single biggest year in the data, and finished below the national average
Dunedin City averaged 6.1% a year and grew 5.9 times, just behind the country. It holds the largest annual rise of any market here, +51.5% in 2004, but beat the national index in only 13 of the 33 years, the lowest of the six.
Wellington had the fewest down years and the deepest single fall
Wellington City averaged 5.8% a year and grew 5.7 times. It fell in only six of the 33 years, fewer than any city here, but 2023 took 20.8% off the index, the largest annual fall in the entire dataset. It has fallen again in 2025 and 2026.
Christchurch is the most volatile, and the least affected by the 2023 correction
Christchurch City averaged 5.8% a year and grew 5.7 times. It recorded nine down years, more than any other market here, including four in the nine years from 1999. It also produced the best single year of any city outside Dunedin, +34.2% in 2022, and its 2023 fall of 9.3% was the mildest of the five cities.
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