Wanaka's largest building firm has claimed the resort is bucking the national trend of a depreciating housing market, saying statistics soon to be released by the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand will confirm their optimistic outlook.
David Reid Homes' Wanaka director, Richard Fairbairn, said the company was thriving, with prospective building projects, despite the ‘‘doom and gloom'' forecasts from around the country.
‘‘The workload we have in our system at the moment is matched by a number of large projects we have in the pipeline - yet all the reports from around the country in the past six months have been about a falling house market,'' he claimed.
David Reid Homes said in a press release this week that upcoming REINZ statistics would show Wanaka's housing market was buoyant.
Mr Fairbairn said the company had just taken on two multimillion-dollar developments to build apartments and dwellings at Heritage Estate on the outskirts of Wanaka and stage two of the Ben Brae apartments at Cardrona Village.
While claiming the Wanaka housing market was ‘‘insulated'' from the rest of New Zealand, he said this was limited to the ‘‘top-end'' sector of the buying market - usually cash-rich buyers who were not as dependent on financing restrictions.
‘‘A lot of our clients don't necessarily need to carry a lot of mortgage debt and are choosing to enter the market during this perceived downturn because it means they don't have to wait to find builders or sections,'' he said.
Mr Fairbairn cited examples of cash-rich Southland farmers benefiting from the lucrative dairy boom payouts, many of whom were bypassing Queenstown for Wanaka.
However, when contacted by the Otago Daily Times, G.J. Gardner Queenstown Wanaka franchisee owner Laurie Mains took a more pragmatic view regarding the insulated position of the Lakes District housing market.
A ‘‘slowdown'' in the region was possible, particularly for buyers new to the housing market, who faced a period of uncertainty, he said.
‘‘However, it is never going to be more cost-effective to build a new house than in the current climate,'' he said.
Buyers looking for ‘‘affordable homes'' in the Lakes district could feel the squeeze and were not insulated from any downturn. However, he did not expect any such downturn would be long.
