NZ Engine

Source: Radio New Zealand

Gold Rush: Who’s Cashing In on Queenstown? An RNZ series examining the money flowing into Queenstown – and who’s missing out.

The number of first-home buyers in Queenstown has climbed to an 18-year high, making up 19 percent of all the district’s property purchases in 2025.

That is despite soaring property prices and thousands of people on waitlists for affordable housing schemes – with one buyer facing a $600,000 average increase in house prices since he first started looking.

The figures, from property analytics firm Cotality, follow a year in which the district hit a record asking price of $1.6 million, up nearly 20 percent on the previous year.

Christian Belmont, who has lived in Queenstown for more than a decade, said it was far from easy to buy a house in what was now the most expensive district in New Zealand.

“I think I have like 60 to 80 percent of all the real estate agents’ phone numbers on my phone, because I’ve been to dozens and dozens and dozens of open homes and talked with every single real estate agent that I possibly could,” he said.

He and his fiancé have been looking for a house since 2020, after he returned from a short stint in Auckland.

“It’s a long process and I totally recognise a lot of people are in the same boat. We’re very lucky to even have the opportunity to be in this process, very lucky to have the opportunity to even live here. But it still can be frustrating.”

Belmont, a teacher, said his main motivation was simply to get away from the uncertainty of the rental market, but his hopes had been dashed time and again by undisclosed body corporate fees, or other issues “under the hood” that locked him and his fiancé out from buying.

“There are a lot of real estate agents. There are a lot of opportunities. There are a lot of really beautiful houses that you go and see, and something means that you can’t get it or somebody can beat you out for it,” he said.

The couple had resigned themselves to a 10 percent deposit, saying 20 percent was simply out of reach.

Still, putting that together – while living with his partner and mother in a rental – had been “pretty darn hard”, Belmont said.

‘Overwhelming’ demand for affordable housing scheme

Many in Belmont’s position had turned to an affordable housing scheme run by the not-for-profit Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust.

It had built 30 houses in Arrowtown on land provided by the council, with another 38 to go, partly aimed at making it easier for buyers to get a foot in the door.

Its Tewa Banks development included social housing, affordable rentals, rent-to-buy houses and ‘assisted ownership’ houses – where people could purchase the house, but the land would be retained in perpetuity by the Trust.

To sign up, people had to live and work in Queenstown, not own any other property, and have a maximum household income of $130,000.

More than 1600 households were on the waitlist, chief executive Julie Scott said.

“We’ve had overwhelming demand for these homes. I mean, Arrowtown in itself is such a desirable location, but just it’s been extraordinary, the demand,” she said.

The first residents came from a wide range of backgrounds, Scott said.

“We’ve got a high school teacher just in one of these [houses] with his son. We’ve got a lot of tradies, we’ve got some senior housing up the front for senior retirees who don’t obviously own in other income or assets. We’ve got a heap of families and they’re just working all the jobs that keep the town functioning.”

Scott said when it came to meeting the demand for affordable housing in Queenstown, she was hopeful the government would work with councils.

“One thing that we would like to see is a really good regional deal that gives us tools to help level the playing field for, for workers and lower-moderate income households,” she said.

“I think government support for all sorts of housing programmes, for the last couple of years, has been fairly limited. There’s been five Community Housing providers across the country that have been chosen to partner with the government to deliver social housing. There’s probably about another 90 of us sitting in the back wings across the country, kind of scratching our head thinking how do we help the people in our communities?”

First home buyers looking further afield, or to new developments

Bayleys Queenstown sales manager Dee McQuillan said despite the sharp rise in house prices, buying a property under $1m in Queenstown was “absolutely” still possible.

She said there had been rising optimism among first-home buyers as interest rates fell.

Some first-home buyers had been looking further afield to sections in Kingston, while others had been taking an interest in developments like Frankton’s Five Mile Villas, she said.

“Interest is mostly going to those new offerings and building a bit further away,” she said.

“And from time to time, we do get something a little bit unusual that’s very old and maybe needs some work, that might be just under or just around that $1 million mark as well, in areas like Frankton or Fernhill.”

Buyers competing with holiday homes, short-term rentals

Data from the previous census showed just over a quarter of Queenstown’s houses were empty at any given time, including holiday homes and properties used for short-term rentals.

The website AirROI showed AirBnB listings that made up about the equivalent of about 15 percent of Queenstown.

Belmont said as a prospective first-home buyer, it could be frustrating to see how many homes were being bought by investors for use as holiday homes or short-term accommodation.

“In my experience, tourists don’t just come for the beauty, which is obviously a huge piece of it, but the vibe of Queenstown is what keeps people coming back, how friendly we are to them, how accommodating the Kiwis are, and locals are, to tourists. And sometimes I get frustrated with tourists, like they took that house for Airbnb,” he said.

“The frustrating thing is that how long can this go on before the community actually isn’t that desirable to come to … I feel like there’s a critical mass that we’re approaching.

“We’re trying to have it both ways and maybe if we keep on trying to have it both ways, we won’t be able to have it either way. If that makes sense. It’s scary to me as someone who’s super, super invested in Queenstown as a place and wants to keep it amazing.”

Despite that, he said he was set on living in Queenstown, and driven to be a part of its future.

“We even looked at Oamaru actually, we were really down to move to Oamaru. We were very close to it. But … we really think of Queenstown as our home. My partner and I met each other here. We are committed, we’re getting married here next year … our family is here. Our careers are here and also – you don’t want to betray the town that you love by leaving in many ways because you think you can add value to the town as well. So we both want to stay and help fix it.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A diesel spill has closed Wellington’s Aotea Quay.

Police were notified of a single-vehicle crash involving a fuel truck about 2.45am on Tuesday.

The on-ramp heading northbound was blocked, but motorists could still get off State Highway 1 via the off-ramp.

Police said it will remain closed throughout the morning, and Wellington City Council warn that ferry access and egress would also be impacted.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A meal base that can turn almost any assortment of vegetables and proteins into a one-pot meal is being distributed to foodbanks.

The New Zealand Food Network has teamed up with Nestlé to help families in need make a nutritious meal from scratch with food parcel ingredients.

The network’s chief executive Gavin Findlay said it’s a concept that has been successful with foodbanks in Australia.

“It’s a good healthy product that’s easy to use. A lot of our community’s access and capability of cooking can be challenged if they’re in transitional housing or hotels/motels while they’re waiting,” he said.

Nestlé is manufacturing and donating the meal base sachets, which can be used as a soup or to make a hearty casserole.

“You’re not making a meal per se, it’s a dried sachet product that you’re just adding water to. If you’ve got a kettle and a cup you’re there,” Findlay said.

“This is intentional giving, this is a company saying what can we do to help your community who’s struggling.”

Nestlé New Zealand chief executive Susan Catania said the one-pot meal base had been a success with foodbanks in Australia.

“We know that food insecurity is real and is increasing but we’ve also learned through the partnership [with the NZ Food Network] that food relief often depends on what’s available in any given week,” she said.

“That means people might not know what to do with the mix of items that they get. We really wanted to create a product that would create a versatile meal no matter what mix of proteins, vegetables or pantry items you had on any given week.”

Over the past five years, Nestlé has donated more than 497,000 kilograms of food for the Food Network to distribute to 65 foodbanks and food charities – the equivalent of over 1.1 million meals.

Catania said the meal base would be part of their ongoing partnership.

“We know that now is the right time because the holiday season can be a tough time for a lot ofpeople so this really helps make it a little easier for families to put food on the table.”

Demand on foodbanks has been increasing with no sign of let up – and food charities have been calling for ongoing government funding instead of one-off grants.

The Food Network began in 2020 during the pandemic when the country needed a national organisation to collect and distribute surplus edible food that manufacturers and growers cannot sell.

The network then shares the food amongst food charities that distribute parcels to their communities.

It received a $5.8 million grant from the Ministry of Social Development but does not know if that will be extended past July 2026.

Findlay said more edible food would go to landfill if they could not maintain the current level of service.

“The baseline of people needing some form of support is actually quite high. We thought it was going to drop down post Covid but the cost of living environment means that hasn’t happened and in fact has trended up slightly,” he said.

“We see no let up in the need for helping those that require food support.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

These days only one small section of the Kumutoto stream still flows above ground, the rest is culverted and piped running under the motorway and central city streets before emptying into the harbour.

Where the stream once met the harbour was also the site of one of the main Māori villages in central Wellington, also named Kumutoto.

The manager of Māori heritage recognition and engagement at Heritage NZ, Dennis Ngawhare (Taranaki), said it was just one of many waterways Wellingtonians walked or drove over every day.

“One of the fascinating things with the Kumutoto is that, despite it being buried and culverted and piped from the 1860s onwards, it still leaves its presence in the landscape,” he said.

Heritage NZ has designated the sole remaining above ground section of the river in the Kumutoto forest near Victoria University of Wellington as a Wāhi Tīpuna on the New Zealand Heritage List.

“But regardless of whether you can see the awa or not, you can really see its influence on the landscape and how the city was built around it and over it. And that, unbeknownst to most people in Wellington, that underneath our feet this river is still flowing, albeit through the old pipes and culverts that have been developed over the century and a half at Wellington has been here,” Ngawhare said.

Native fish such as kōkopu, kōaro and perhaps even tuna (eels) still swim in the waters of the Kumutoto, at least in the part in the open air.

Ngawhare, paraphrasing the poet and scholar Dr Alice Te Punga Sommerville, said “no one has told the eels to stop acting like eels.”

“We can bury our streams in pipes and culverts, but eels and other fish life are still going to find their way up and in. And so I think it’s, for any waterway, it’s a really positive sign when we’re seeing life in our streams. And especially in central Wellington, a central city stream, we’re still seeing life.”

The path of the river

Ngawhare remembers while doing his undergraduate degree at Victoria University sitting outside on the marae at Te Tumu Herenga Waka he could hear a “bubbling brook” where there was none visible.

He asked one of the university’s kaumātua who told him that was the Kumutoto, that is where his interest in the awa began.

The stream begins beneath Pukehinau Ridge, in the area now occupied by Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington.

“And so from essentially under the marae at Te Herenga Waka, but down the middle of Kelburn Parade is the culvert or the pipes that kind of gathers all that water from the water table. It flows down Kelburn Parade to a sharp right at Salamanca Road. And those of you who’ve been to Wellington and Victoria University and on Kelburn Parade in Salamanca, it’s quite a sharp right-hand bend. And that essentially, when the road was developed, it followed the course of the awa itself. And just, again, giving shape to the roads that have been built that we travel upon,” Ngawhare said.

From there, it drops down beneath the Kelburn Tennis Court into the Kumutoto Forest, which is a part of the Wellington town belt.

From the glade it then enters into another culvert that runs alongside the Terrace Tunnel and underneath the Northern Motorway. Then cuts to the right underneath The Terrace out to Woodward Street.

It then exits out to Lambton Quay, which was once the waterfront of Wellington, and crosses over several roads out to the harbour at what is now called Kumutoto Plaza.

Ngawhare said you could still see the influence of the Kumutoto on Wellington’s streets, like where the Terrace Tunnel plunges into the gully which now contains the motorway.

The entire path of the river from the university to the harbour can be traversed in about an hour and a half, he said.

“It’s just a real fascinating juxtaposition of coming from the university into the bush and then exiting out on the motorway, travelling underneath tunnels and just following the path of the awa. It’s a really interesting and fascinating walk.”

Kumutoto Papakāinga

Established by Wi Piti Pomare of Ngāti Mutunga in 1824, Kumutoto Pā was a settlement founded at the old mouth of the stream, where Woodward Street and The Terrace meet.

In 1835, ownership was passed over to the tupuna Ngātata-i-te-rangi of Ngāti Te Whiti, Te Ātiawa. Ngawhare said when Ngāti Mutunga left Kumutoto they ritually burned their houses, thereby relinquishing their claim.

“The Kumutoto Papakāinga itself was only occupied for around 30-odd years, but it was quite a significant settlement at the time, not only for the people that were living there, and there were multiple other settlements around the harbour settled by refugees from Taranaki,” he said.

“But the Kumutoto itself was also the heart of the Wellington flax trade, and so flax traders had set up for a few years there at Kumutoto, and that was an important part of the early trade development from Te Whanganui-a-Tara, that Māori were engaged in with English traders.”

By around 1852, most people had moved from Kumutoto and relocated themselves to other places in the region such as Ngauranga, Petone and Waiwhetu, he said.

Ngawhare said the name Kumutoto is said to refer to Māori birthing practices. It was known as a place where the wāhine of that early settlement period would go to have their children.

Daylighting

When asked if the Kumutoto could potentially be “daylighted,” ie making the stream visible again, Ngawhare said regardless of what humans do to redirect and to bury waterways, water will always find a way.

He said there had been talk of daylighting other streams, like the Waitangi stream also in Wellington or the Horotiu which runs beneath Auckland’s Queen Street.

“It would be difficult. And for some of these streams, infrastructure won’t really allow us to do it. But wouldn’t it be great to be able to see these streams flowing through our cities again?”

And while it may initially seem impossible it has happened in other cities around the world, such as in Seoul where an elevated motorway was removed in order to daylight the Cheonggyecheon stream, which has since become a popular park.

Ngawhare said one important process of listing the stream at Heritage New Zealand, was not only to acknowledge its historical significance, but it was also an opportunity to recognise the significance and importance of the waterway itself, so that perhaps in the future that people may look at daylighting this stream and other streams that there is a body of evidence there.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand