- First-home buyers priced out of Queenstown are considering towns like Glenorchy, Kingston and Cromwell.
- Properties under $1m in Queenstown are often apartments or townhouses.
- Interest rate drops have increased first-home buyer activity, with many trading travel time for affordability.
First-home buyers are looking at small towns up to an hour out of Queenstown to get a foot on the property ladder in the district.
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Agents told OneRoof they have noticed an uptick in interest in stand-alone homes in Glenorchy, Kingston, and Cromwell.
Bayleys Queenstown sales manager Dee McQuillan said buyers at the bottom of the market were willing to add to their commute times to get an affordable house.
11 Walter Place, in Glenorchy, has a price tag of $1.099m. Photo / Supplied
“It’s not unusual and what you’d expect to see in any big city. As demand increases or prices rise a bit, people start to look at the trade-off.”
She said the uptick in first-home buyer activity had coincided with a drop in interest rates.
“A lot of people are quite excited to be out looking for a home. We’ve got some first-home buyers who wouldn’t have been able to enter the market six months ago. There’s positivity out there.”
Most of the first-home buyers looking at properties in and around Queenstown rented in the area and had jobs in the city, she said.
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Recent sales in Glenorchy suggest that buyers can get a stand-alone home in the district’s small towns for almost half the price of an apartment or townhouse in Queenstown.
A one-bedroom, one-bathroom home on an 842sqm section on Forbes Place sold last year for $570,000, while a two-bedroom, one-bathroom home on Argyle Street sold for $600,000.
The price of larger homes in Glenorchy is higher but still way off anything similar in Queenstown. A four-bedroom, two-bathroom home on a 1012sqm section at 5 Butement Street is currently inviting offers over $920,000, while a near-new three-bedroom, two-bathroom home at 11 Walter Place is for sale for $1.099m.
Properties in new developments such as a two-bedroom, one-bathroom townhouse in the Five Mile Villas in Queenstown can be bought off-plan. Photo / Supplied
In Athol, a three-bedroom, one-bathroom home on a 4812sqm section sold this month for $505,000. The town is an hour’s drive from Queenstown.
While property values in commuter towns around Queenstown were lower, the number of homes coming up for sale was also fewer.
First-home buyers put off by hour-long commutes still had options, though. Despite Queenstown making headlines with $40m-plus sales, the town still had properties in the sub-$1m price bracket.
Most of the homes selling for six figures were apartments and townhouses, Harcourts Queenstown sales manager Priscilla Uhrle told OneRoof.
Current options in the city include a three-bedroom townhouse with an RV of just over $1m at 5 Curvey Court, in Jacks Point, being auctioned later this month. A two-bedroom A-frame at 23A Inverness Crescent, in Arrowtown just sold at under the hammer last week.
First-home buyers with less than $1m to spend in Queenstown can pick up apartments like this one on Mountain Ash Drive, in Frankton. Photo / Supplied
Frankton, only a 10-minute drive from Queenstown CBD, had a good amount of affordable stock, too. A stylish one-bedroom apartment for sale at 6/16 Mountain Ash Drive has an RV of $560,000, while a three-bedroom property at 21A Towne Place has an asking price of $980,000.
There were also several large new developments underway in the suburb, with off-the-plan opportunities available at Waipuna Rise and Five Mile Villas. Properties in both are being marketed by Bayleys, with prices sitting around $850,000.
Uhrle said Queenstown listings were up year-on-year, but the affordable end of the market was still undersupplied. When entry-level homes did come up for sale, they tended to attract a lot of attention.
A three-bedroom do-up on Golden Terrace in Queenstown exceeded expectations when it sold for an impressive $1.247m at auction last month. The property attracted multiple bidders who were all looking for a project.
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