Crisis chills Queenstown’s white-hot property market

PHOTO: All these houses in Queenstown’s Shotover Country subdivision have been built within the past seven years. Photo: Paul Taylor

Covid-19 has created the perfect storm for Queenstown’s economy, and the usually buoyant property market is not immune, writes Paul Taylor

Three months ago, Queenstown Lakes District’s property market was on a high after a decade of rampant growth.

Median house prices had more than doubled from $480,000 in 2010 to $1,055,000 in January 2020, making it the second most expensive district in the country behind Auckland’s North Shore.

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There were few houses listed below the $700,000 mark.

The growth was built on a seemingly endless stampede of three million visitors per year, creating tourism jobs and, in turn, demand for housing, which created more jobs in construction and real estate.

Such was the demand for visitor accommodation, and the projections of future income from it, there were more than 4000 hotel rooms under development or awaiting consent, across more than a dozen hotel projects.

And the shortage of hotel rooms had a major knock-on effect for the housing market.

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