Women aged 55-64 are busy searching online for character properties in Whanganui.

Property listing website realestate.co.nz has released data for March, including the demographics of those searching its site and the most popular types of searches.

The March data shows that regional New Zealand outshone the metropolitan areas in record asking prices and new listings. Manawatu-Whanganui was one of the regions that hit record asking prices during March, up 3.2 per cent to an average of $339,932.

"The regions are looking lively with asking prices and new listings up in most of the country's regions, while the main centres paint a different picture," realestate.co.nz spokeswoman Vanessa Taylor said.

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A breakdown of statistics for Whanganui shows that during March the average asking price for properties was $281,466 and there were 134 new listings.

The biggest group of people searching Whanganui listings was women aged 55-64 and this age group made up the biggest portion of traffic on the website. The region had 65.5 per cent female searchers compared with 34.5 per cent male.

The term "character" was the top search term for Whanganui.

People searching for property in Whanganui were from Manawatu-Whanganui, Auckland, Wellington, Canterbury and Waikato.