The great divide

They are less than 4 kilometres apart but more than $1 million separates Christchurch’s dearest and cheapest neighbourhoods.

Just a few kilometres and over a million dollars separate Christchurch’s dearest and cheapest suburbs.

After two years of rising real estate prices, the median value of a Fendalton home has reached $1.52m, while in Phillipstown, less than 4 kilometres away, the median value is $388,050.

The October figures, from real estate analyst CoreLogic, reveal the widening gap in home values across Christchurch as 10 neighbourhoods join the milliondollar club. The city’s median (mid-point) house price is now a record $670,000, according to the Real Estate Institute’s latest data. The two wealthiest pockets of housing are the inner northwest, and the seaside southeast.

CoreLogic figures show the secondhighest median value after leafy Fendalton is in lofty Scarborough Hill ($1.48m), then Kennedy’s Bush ($1.41m), Merivale

($1.26m), Richmond Hill ($1.17m), Strowan ($1.12m), Clifton Hill ($1.08m), West Melton ($1.01m), Moncks Bay ($1m), and Redcliffs ($1m).

Seven other suburbs – Cass Bay, Sumner (flat), Westmorland, Cashmere, Huntsbury, Mt Pleasant, and Prebbleton – all have median values in the

$900,000-plus bracket heading toward

$1m. At the other end of the affordability

scale, Phillipstown is one of five suburbs where median values are cheaper by more than a million dollars than Fendalton and Scarborough.

Second less pricey is Aranui

($410,650), followed by Linwood ($433,100), Waltham ($444,850), and Bromley

($448,950).

The city’s dearest and cheapest suburbs are 3.3km apart at their closest points. Phillipstown is within easy walking distance to town and has a range of free-standing houses and an increasing number of units, including newly built townhouses.

In Fendalton, several homes have recently sold for more than $4m, including a Wairarapa Tce house which sold for $8m earlier this year.

In the past year, more than 50 Christchurch suburbs have seen gains in median values of $100,000 or more, CoreLogic’s data shows.

Hillmorton, Beckenham and Mairehau all had an annual increase in values of just over 30 per cent. The least price growth was in Kennedy’s Bush, Prebbleton, and the central city.

A report this month from CoreLogic describes Christchurch’s housing market as having ‘‘very favourable affordability’’ compared with other centres. The city has consistent demand for homes, ‘‘restrained’’ investor activity, low levels of mortgage arrears and a low supply of homes for sale, the report says.

Five years ago Christchurch had just two million-dollar suburbs, Scarborough and Fendalton, while median values in Phillipstown and Aranui were under $300,000.

Despite the rising prices, Christchurch remains one of New Zealand’s most affordable major cities. Auckland has 171 million-dollar suburbs out of a total of 208, and Wellington has 54. The country’s priciest suburb is Herne Bay in Auckland, where the median home value is $3.25m.

New Zealand’s overall median house price is $795,000.