House prices in Rotorua have recorded the second highest rise in the country for the quarter ending in December 2025. Photo / Andrew Warner
The Rotorua housing market is heating up as more properties change hands at the “higher end” of the market.
The latest QV House Price Index showed Rotorua recorded a 2.6% increase in the average house price for the three months to December, reaching $680,755.
The city had the second-highest rise of the country’s main urban areas for both the quarter and the past 12 months (5.1%), behind only Invercargill.
Rotorua’s average price has fallen about 10.5% since the local market peak in February 2022, when it hit $761,309, according to QV.
Rotorua real estate agents say the reason for the recent bump is having more higher-value properties on the market, and fewer first-home-buyer type properties.
The top three Rotorua sales in the quarter were a $1.5 million property in Hamurana, a $1.47m property in Lake Ōkāreka, and a $1.36m home in Matipo Heights, according to Valocity.
Rotorua-based EVES Realty Eastern Bay of Plenty general manager Steve Lovegrove said at the “ground level”, agents were finding the prices “quite static”.
“What’s changing is the mix of housing selling.”
Six to 12 months ago, $1m to $1.5m lifestyle properties were “very difficult to sell”, he said.
People “didn’t have the confidence to upgrade or to buy bigger homes”.
Now, higher-value properties were selling “more consistently and almost coming back to a normal market”, he said.
He believed there was “good reason to be optimistic” in 2026.
“I think we’re going to see quite a strong marketplace in the first half of the year with people settled and reasonably confident in making a move and with interest rates being quite static …”
Lovegrove said there might be “a little bit of a withholding as the uncertainty of the election comes closer”.
Once the question of who would form the next Government was resolved, however, people would have certainty and probably come back to the market next summer, he said.
Harcourts Rotorua director Wayne Pamment said price growth was often reflective of asking price.
“I think all we’re really seeing is less of your first-home-buyer type properties coming on to the market and often more of the higher-end properties.”
He believed the QV data reflected higher-end property vendors having more confidence in the market.
Pamment said he did not see a “price lift” in the market yet.
Six months ago, the median house sale price was in the $400,000 to $500,000 range in Rotorua, he said.
“It’s creeping up into the mid-sixes now.”
That reflected more properties selling in the $850,000 and above range and “dragging that median sale price up”.
Pamment said he had started seeing “more solid engagement” from buyers since October.
“If the property is presented reasonably well, the price expectations aren’t through the roof, then we are getting buyers that are turning up and going, ‘hey, this actually meets our needs and let’s get on with it’.”
The last quarter “definitely had a bit more steam behind it than what we’ve seen previously”.
Ray White Rotorua project and engagement manager Crispian Stewart said there was an increase in market activity to close off the last quarter with the number of sales, house prices and days on the market indicators “all trending positively”.
Seasonal factors alongside interest rates levelling out were contributors, while December had a “rush” ahead of the holiday period.
Stewart said an election year tended to briefly “pause activity”.
“Global activity will also have an influence. But in general, there is optimism that 2026 will see a steady positive increase in key market indicators as the year progresses.”
Wayne Shum, senior research analyst with property data platform Valocity, said interest rate cuts in the last quarter had helped drive price growth.
December’s relaxation of the loan-to-value ratio restrictions by the Reserve Bank had “helped a lot of people get in the market as well”.
Shum said some long-term interest rates increased towards the end of December, which prompted people to think “this is the bottom of the rates cycle, let’s get in now”.
In a statement, QV national spokesperson Andrea Rush said average residential property values across the country rose over the December quarter, following a prolonged period of flat or declining conditions through much of 2025.
Nationally, residential property values rose by 1.1% over the quarter, with the national average now $910,118, down 13.1% from the January 2022 market peak.
She said the latest data showed value increases becoming more widespread across the country, even though the pace of change remained modest in many areas.
Rush said the number of homes for sale nationwide was at “the highest level in a decade”.
“Buyers continue to have the upper hand, with more choice and the ability to negotiate.
“This is keeping value movements in check, even as activity improves in some areas. That dynamic is also contributing to improved affordability in relative terms, particularly for first-home buyers, who remain active across many parts of the country.”
Megan Wilson is a health and general news reporter for the Bay of Plenty Times and the Rotorua Daily Post. She has been a journalist since 2021.