Metro Realty managing partner Mark Stevens said that over his long career he had not seen such a busy market in the city.
``This is my 32nd year doing the job and this would be the busiest we've ever been as far as multiple offers,'' Mr Stevens said. ``It's not unusual for us to get more than four or five offers on one property.
``The market is extremely buoyant for people selling.''
Mr Stevens said the highest demand was in the first-home buyer range of properties from $250,000 to $300,000.
Harcourts Dunedin manager Richard Stringer also said that it was usual this year for there to be four or five offers on a house in the Dunedin market.
This winter had been an ``excellent'' time to sell, he said.
``The properties that have been out there and available have had such fierce competition that there's been some pretty good sales results for those that sold.''
Mr Stevens said he expected the competitive pressure on houses in this price range would feed into the next level of properties.
``In my experience, that will lead into the next level, because those people have to sell their houses to buy into the next one and so on and so on.
``So I think that's going to fuel the rest of the market, which is what's happened in the past.''
Figures released from Quotable Value this month showed Dunedin house prices had increased more than 11% over the past year.
On a rolling three-month average, Mr Stevens said data compiled by Metro showed an increase of between 14% and 15% from the same time last year.
Cutlers property consultant Hamish McDonald said he was also experiencing a lot of interest from buyers in the market.
``Any house that is structurally sound is getting snapped up.''
He said there had also been large numbers of people to open homes.
Mr McDonald said the market was the busiest it had been for ``a good 10 years'' and multiple offers were increasingly common.
``I had a five-way multi-offer on Monday. My colleague had an eight-way one on Monday,'' Mr McDonald said.
Otago Property Investors' Association president Rhonda Schlaadt said lots of people were attending open homes.
``From what I've heard, the number of people going to open homes, even over the snowy weekends, there's been good numbers of groups going around looking at open homes, so people are definitely wanting to purchase.''
Ms Schlaadt said the market was busier and there were ``certainly'' more multiple offers on houses compared with last year.
