Southland bucks national house price trend
“If you told me five years ago you are going to sell houses over $1m, I would have told you that you were drunk. Now it’s the norm.”
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Southland has hit an all-time average asking house price record for the second straight month, and Invercargill’s longest-serving real estate agent believes the top end of the market is driving it.
A realestate.co.nz property report says Southland is bucking the national trend around asking price figures.
June provided an all-time high for the second month in a row. The average asking price in Southland was up 8.6% year-on-year to $568,647.
In the first six months of 2025, the region recorded a 2.9% increase in its average asking price, from $552,572 to $568,647.
Sean Bellew, who has been selling houses in Invercargill for 36 years, noted the average asking price and actual sale price were two different things.
Although from his experience over the past eight weeks, he expected the median house sale price would go up as well.
It was at the higher end of the market where Bellew had seen the most activity in the Invercargill housing market of late.
“A good sector of the properties I’ve been selling have been $1m-plus.”
“It is the new norm. Eighteen months ago, you didn’t experience this. It’s a territory you never went to; you never sold anything over a million dollars.
“If you told me five years ago you are going to sell houses over $1m, I would have told you that you were drunk. Now it’s the norm.”
Bellew suggested all of that top-end activity would have lifted the average asking prices for Southland.
He added that with the housing market thriving, it highlighted that Southland was in a good spot economically at the moment.
While Southland’s average asking price has continued to reach record highs, that has bucked the national trend.
According to the realestate.com report, New Zealand’s property market has hit 2.5-years of flat average asking prices.
The latest data from realestate.co.nz shows the national average asking price is marginally down 0.9% year-on-year to $855,360.
Realestate.com spokesperson Vanessa Williams said it hasn’t seen the national average asking price over $900,000 since December 2022.
“We could say the market [nationally] is stable, but in reality, it’s flat,” Williams said.
“There is very little movement, and when we do see any change, it tends to be in the regions.
“A flat market is good for both buyer and seller expectations, but we also know that a moving property market is a good sign of a recovering economy.”