New Zealand’s next million dollar suburbs

Atom Go Tian
Senior Data Analyst
Ray White Group

Which are the next suburbs where house prices will exceed $1 million in 2025?

First, let’s consider where these $1 million suburbs are at the moment and how they’ve been growing over the past five years.

As of May 2024, there were 562 suburbs in New Zealand with a median house price of at least $1 million. More than half (54 per cent) of these can be found in Auckland, whereas Wellington has 36 and Christchurch only 21.

What is interesting is, while the number of $1 million suburbs have definitely exploded compared to five years ago, this growth seems to have slowed down over the last 12 months.

In fact, what we are seeing is that the number of $1 million suburbs spiked in 2021 after prices surged for many suburbs. From 2019 to 2024, the number of $1 million suburbs have doubled, but from 2021 to 2024 the number of $1 million suburbs have dropped by 18 per cent (only four out of five suburbs are still on the list).

Assuming this trend continues, we can expect the number of $1 million suburbs will have a very low chance of increasing in the next 12 months. There will be a lot more suburbs at risk of losing their million dollar status compared to the suburbs hoping to join the club.

Still, since we’ve posed the question, we’ve listed the ten suburbs with the highest potential of surpassing $1 million within the next 12 months. For example, Ohakuri currently has a median house price of $998,000 and an average growth rate of 15.7 per cent over the last three years. Assuming prices grow another 15.7 per cent in the next 12 months then we can expect houses in Ohakuri to reach $1,154,789.

Inversely, Auckland dominates the list of suburbs that are most at risk of dropping their $1 million valuation. Wellington appears twice as well, while Puketapo-Eskdale is the only suburb that is not from a major city.

The suburbs that emerged in this most-at-risk list are those who had the lowest growth rate over the last three years and the lowest valuation in 2024. For example, St Lukes in Auckland ended June 2024 with a median house price of exactly $1 million and an average growth rate of -16.6 per cent over the last three years. If this trend were to continue for the next 12 months then St Lukes could be expected to reach a median house price of $833,670 during that period.