Find out how much it costs to buy a home in the zone for Christchurch Boys' High School, one of the country's oldest and most prestigious secondary schools. Photo / George Heard
Find out how much it costs to buy a home in the zone for Christchurch Boys' High School, one of the country's oldest and most prestigious secondary schools. Photo / George Heard
The Herald has exclusively analysed house prices and rents for more than 150 Canterbury school zones to discover where house values are highest and lowest and where they’ve changed the most. Check the interactive below to see the results for your neighbourhood.
Wayne Shum, senior research analyst with Valocity, said great schools can be found right across the country – both in areas with lower property values and those with higher.
“The types of houses in a suburb have a much bigger impact on the median price of that area,” he said.
For example, inner-city school zones tend to draw students from apartments – which cost less and bring house price averages down.
On the other hand, long-established suburbs, with bigger homes and larger land sections, typically have higher house prices, Shum said.
Perhaps the city’s most famous catchment zones are those for Christchurch Boys’ and Christchurch Girls’ High Schools – opened in 1851 and 1877 respectively.
The data shows families interested in buying a home within the catchment zones for both schools would be looking at a median sale price in July 2024 of $857,000.
Families looking to rent within the zone would typically pay $650 per week.
Christchurch Girls' High School old girl Lucy Spoors and double sculling partner Brooke Francis have just been crowned Olympic gold medallists. Photo / Photosport
Tai Tapu Primary School about 18km south of Christchurch city is the zone with the most expensive median house prices in Canterbury at $1.48 million.
Lincoln High School about 20km southwest of the city has the highest median-priced homes of any secondary Canterbury school zone, at $960,000.
The school zone with the highest typical weekly rent is Cashmere Primary Te Pae Kererū's catchment in Cashmere at $850.
The devastating earthquakes of 2010 and 2011 have shaken up the city and its school zones landscape, pushing many families out of many traditional central and eastern areas, opening up new population hubs to the south, like around Lincoln, Rolleston and West Melton, and also north into the Waimakariri District.
Not every school is included in the interactive tables below. We have included only schools with zones recognised by the Ministry of Education, and where the combined catchment area has had a minimum of 20 house sales within the year.
