The Wanaka real estate market over the previous few years has been strongly influenced by the Auckland property buyers and their confidence and ability to extract value out of their properties up north. It was this time of the year, with the Aucklanders here on the private school holidays with our boarders shut down when our market took off with it peaking in late 2021. FOMO dominated and even many who didn’t arrive in town intending to purchase jumped on the wagon and purchased. This ski season sees a completely different phase – the environment can best be described as cautious.
In the Wanaka district the prices saw a significant change but this was delayed compared to the rest of the country. Price medians went from $906,387 in 2013 to $1,966,673. This trajectory continued into 2023, which saw Wanaka achieve the largest ten-year growth in the region, hitting an average asking price of $2,012,974.
This property price growth was fueled by immigration, economic performance, interest rates and limited housing supply, which combined to create a competitive market environment.
Being a Buyers Agent during the 2020 through to later in the 2022 period was a stark contrast to the market today. We have a full blown buyers market currently. I was also working solely with buyers during the GFC.
How have we ended up in this market with only the most unrealistic vendors agents keen to talk up their prices?
Even when there has been a hint of buyers regaining their confidence en masse, external factors have continuously popped up making buyers risk averse. Global fragmentation in our evolving new geopolitically fragmentated world impact. Broad economic factors which have more recently seen the official cash rate drop, flowing on to the lowering of interest rates are not overwhelmingly certain.
Supply and demand needs to rebalance – it is taking a lot of work for the vendors agents to get through the layers of well shopped over listings leaving this as an active moderating factor.
The rental market has seen unmet levels of rental demand convert to a surplus in the past 24 months, in Wanaka. Returns have reacted accordingly.
Economic uncertainty and job insecurity have not changed since the election. The impacts of the high inflation period and interest rates on mortgages are still impacting the spending power of both our locals and the national tourists. Simply, it just doesn’t feel as busy and buzzy this season.
Earlier this year there were a couple of sectors of international buyers that started to get very active in their enquiry levels. The first group were those worried about the direction that the change of President was taking America. The second group were out of Asia and had seen some media that led them to be looking for investment bargains in New Zealand. Over a 3 week period there was unprecedented enquiry. In both of these instances this enthusiasm had to be tempered by out Foreign Buyers legislation from 2018.
Between the later part of 2024 and April 2025 there have been regular rumours of the 2018 Foreign Buyers legislation changing. To date the hurdles to buying residential property haven’t lowered as many had predicted. Investment category buyers are actively looking to secure an opportunity through the process set up by the current government to attract capital into the country.
The current market favors buyers with cash. Buyers have plenty of leverage at the negotiating table. There is ample potential to align your terms and conditions to match your goals.
I am confident in picking that the second half of the year for NZ’s housing market may be just as subdued as the first. This has made for life as a Buyers Agent to be incredibly satisfying and productive over the past 12 months. Long may it continue.
Avoid being a buyer confidence statistic get some proper guidance and local expertise and strike while the market is not hot.