Arrowtown began booming back in the 1990s and hasn’t really stopped, says Richard Newman, principal of Bayleys Arrowtown.
Newman moved to the historic South Island gold mining town 20 minutes from Queenstown with his parents in 1969 and has seen mega changes – house prices, for one thing.
The average sale price sits around $1.8 million with sections a minimum of $1m, but sections are hard to come by, he says. Up on the ridgeline sections with great views are even more expensive. “Those sections years ago, and I’m talking in the 1990s, were $250,000. They’re now $2m, if you can find one.”
Arrowtown has also bucked the trend of falling house prices seen around most of the country.
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“It took off in ‘92 and our average sale price has kept going up, it hasn’t gone back yet, and I think we’re 3.5%, 4% up from last year.”
Newman loves his hometown, returning there after travelling overseas and says it has a cool rustic vibe.
A gold mining town back in the 1860s, there are strict controls to keep the centre looking the way it was, but there are now also great cafes and top-of-the-line restaurants. After the gold rush, the town morphed into a tiny farming town, staying that way through the depression years.
“The farmers would come to Arrowtown to get their groceries and petrol. It was a little village of 300 people, basically.
“We moved here in 1969 with my parents and the population was 300. I think it had two pubs, three garages, believe it or not, one tearoom, a dairy and a general store which had everything, and that was the main street.”
Kiwi golfer Kieran Muir in action at the 2020 New Zealand Golf Open at Millbrook Resort. The golf course has super-charged the region's property market. Photo / Getty Images
The cottage on the left on tree-lined Buckingham Street in Arrowtown has a 2021 ratings valuation of $1.65m and sold in November last year for $1.85m. It has a land size of 286sqm. Photo / Supplied
The town stayed like that until the early 1990s then began to evolve, and in 1993 Millbrook, the golf and lifestyle resort, opened which brought more people, and there are also another two golf courses.
“Ever since then the market in Arrowtown has sort of gone crazy. We’re limited from three golf courses for land so obviously it’s quite expensive here.”
A lot of Aucklanders have holiday homes in Arrowtown, and also people come from the east coast of Australia; from Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, and there’s more inquiry from Singaporeans and people from Hong Kong.
Newman says the town is becoming more like Aspen, the exclusive ski resort town in Colorado in the United States.
“People want to live here but sometimes it’s out of their reach,” he says.
There have been changing demographics with older people selling up and going to retirement villages and affluent newcomers moving in, which also happened in Aspen.
“It was a little town with a fire brigade, a school and all that stuff, and slowly you can see in Arrowtown that’s changing.”
While there are traditionally not many listings, there is always demand with a waiting list for certain types of homes not necessarily in existence.
In Arrowtown, the $1.8m average sale price gets you a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home with a garage, not a mansion.
Newman says brand-new homes at nearby Hanley Downs and Jack’s Point are selling for $1.3m to $1.6m, but in Arrowtown you can add another $500,000 for the same sort of house.
Despite the changes the town has gone through, there’s still a community feel and the strict heritage orders along with the limitations of land mean the town won’t change too much.
And while the tourists disappeared over Covid, they are back now, Newman says.
“The second gold rush here is tourism; that’s what’s kept this town going.”
It’s a great place to live with plenty of walks and three ski fields only 40 minutes away – Coronet Peak, The Remarkables and Cardrona.
