The countryside property business is booming, says PGG Wrightson Real Estate, which announced today it had sold $2.3 billion of rural property in the 12 months to March 31 - a 65 per cent jump.
Slumping real estate stats from the cities are not being seen in therural economy, with the booming dairy sector a partly behind for the boom.
General manager of PGG Wrightson Real Estate Stuart Cooper says the buoyancy of dairying was one factor in the success, but not the whole story.
"We have sold a large number of dairy properties, but we have also achieved increases in the number of sales in the wider rural real estate sector, in residential and in lifestyle property sales.
Cooper says the company sold 19 rural properties worth $10 million or more during the period, as well as a further 63 properties in excess of $5 million.
These "premium value farms" were not just dairy, with viticulture, arable and horticultural farms also included.
Property sales totalled $1.813 billion for the period, which is up 85.4 per cent on the previous year.
"In the lifestyle sector the national market overall declined slightly during the year, said Cooper, but PGG Wrightson sold lifestyle properties worth ten per cent more than for the same period the year before.
PGG Wrightson Real Estate has a network of 64 offices in New Zealand, plus four in Australia.
