That extra bedroom will cost you the least in Upper Hutt

Thursday, 26 June 2025

Upgrading to a four-bedroom home will cost you less than $200,000 in Upper Hutt - a drop of 8% over the last year.

If you are thinking about buying a bigger house or need to expand, now is a good time, with the best place in the region being Upper Hutt.

Despite the property market being a bit flat around the country, there are always people moving and buying.

And if you are considering moving up the property ladder, Cotality’s Property Pulse report says with the price gap between three and four-bedroom homes having fallen across the country, doing it now could be an opportunity.

Cotality’s chief property economist Kelvin Davidson said current conditions could favour those looking to move to somewhere bigger.

He said it had never been cheap to move up the property ladder but a soft property market can be a good opportunity to trade up.

It might be a good time to move to accommodate your expanding family with mortgage rates down.

“‘Movers’ remain a group to keep an eye on in the coming months.”

The cheapest place to trade up in the Wellington region is Upper Hutt with an 8% drop in the price gap, which will still cost you just under the $200,000 mark.

In Auckland it’s an eye-watering $601,000 to go up to four bedrooms which Davidson said wasn’t surprising considering the concentration of high end properties. Even then, it was 5% ‒ or $32,000 ‒ less than the last year.

Manukau, North Shore, and Rodney also currently have trade-up premiums in excess of $300,000, down between 3.4% and 2.3% over the year.

Davidson said the only market where the trade-up premium had actually increased to any meaningful degree in the past year was Franklin, with four-bedroom house values outperforming three bedrooms, up 3%.

Lower Hutt also had a rise, although it was a tiny 0.1%.

If you are looking at moving out of your current region to somewhere completely new, six areas had trade-ups of at least $300,000 ‒ Queenstown, Hastings, Mackenzie, Waipa, Whakatāne and Western Bay of Plenty.

The smallest trade-up cost was in Ruapehu, where it was $97,264, with Clutha and South Waikato just above it.

The biggest drops of at least 10% in the past year were Central Hawke’s Bay, South Waikato, Whanganui and Whangārei.

Cotality’s chief property economist Kelvin Davidson said some of the biggest drops in upgrading costs were in the regions.

But in South Wairarapa you need to spend a bit more to get a bigger home.

Davidson said a case could be made that it might not be a bad time to consider a bigger home.

The extra finance and the move itself were still a significant costs but mortgage rates had fallen steadily, and there was a lot of choice, he said.

“Take Wellington City, for example, where after the premium spiked up from around $197,000 in 2020 to $284,000 in 2021, it’s since dropped back to less than $240,000,” Davidson said.

He said the movers, rather than first home buyers, were quieter than usual in the last few years but they were a group to keep an eye on.