The council wanted to see more affordable construction happening in the city, and wanted all Wellingtonians to have the ability to own their own home, Lester said.
He was "personally committed" to ensuring people had affordable housing options.
Lester pointed to the recently announced $1.5 billion plan to revitalise neighbouring city Porirua and provide at least 2000 KiwiBuild homes.
He said the council was also creating more social housing and affordable rentals for Wellington residents.
Today's values will be officially released on Wednesday, but show the average rating value in the city has increased to $876,912 since the last rating valuations in 2015.
The cost of land has also jumped up by 77 per cent for residential sections.
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QV general manager David Nagel said the sharp rise was not unusual.
"Land is a scarce commodity," he said.
"There's an expectation that land in a strong market will always increase at a greater rate than capital value."
QV carry out the rating valuations for Wellington City Council every three years in an attempt to bring the RV in line with market values.
The new values for nearly 80,000 properties around Wellington also show the average section value is now $476,074.
Nagel said large increases for traditionally affordable suburbs came about partly because first-home buyers and investors were competing for the same properties.
He said there had been growth in those areas over the past three years, and prices could continue to increase until people simply couldn't afford to buy there any more.
But Nagel didn't believe Wellington was in danger of running into such dire housing issues as Auckland, because Wellington had more locations within the region that were still available for development, and less migrants settling to live in the city.
"I don't believe we're in the same boat as Auckland," he said.
According to the results, the suburb with the highest average RV for houses is Oriental Bay and Roseneath, at $1,631,000, followed by Seatoun at $1,494,000.
The suburb with the lowest average for houses is Wellington central at $460,000.
Lester said it was important to note there were a record level on consents over that time, with $1.75b worth of new properties built since 2015.
"We want to make sure we turn that into affordable housing," he said.
The total value of the 79,040 properties in Wellington was now $78.5b, with the land value of those properties sitting at $40.5b.
New rating values will be sent to property owners after November 14, and owners will have the opportunity before Christmas to lodge objections to their new RV.
The good news for ratepayers is that the increase does not mean rates will increase by a similar percentage.
The council's manager of financial strategy and treasury, Martin Read, said the council used property values to divide the rates it needs to collect between all ratepayers - it doesn't collect more rates just because rating values have increased.
Ray White real estate agent John-Paul Pohe said he'd seen house prices in first home buyer areas jump $80,000-100,000 in about a year.
Many of his clients were renting in Wellington and wanted to buy there too, but soon realised they would have to look further afield to afford it.
"Everyone's sort of changing what they're after," he said.
"Before where they used to shop areas, they now shop price ranges. They're basically selecting where they're going off a 30 minute drive off the CBD."
Wellington buyers needed help from their parents or some type of "generational wealth" to be able to afford their first home in the city, he said.
Million-dollar suburbs
Oriental Bay/Roseneath - CV $1,631,000.
Seatoun - CV $1,494,000.
Kelburn (north)/Te Aro - CV $1,417,000.
Mount Victoria - CV $1,365,000.
Thorndon - CV $1,275,000.
Kelburn (central)/Northland - CV $1,085,000.
Broadmeadows/Khandallah - CV $1,042,000.
Hataitai - CV $1,016,000.
Te Aro (flat) - CV $1,005,000.
