Cromwell

Yeah, Kieran.

So he's one of our... another, uh, Otago, um, runner, so he's from Cromwell, Central Otago.

So, um, 56 loops is his, um, PB.

Very experienced, very tough customer.

Otago.

So Cromwell, Alexandra, your average house price around nine hundred thousand dollars.

Now, this area has had some of the best long-term growth of last wee while, top 15% for the country for house price growth.

So why are you putting it at number two? Because again, that growth has been and gone, right? Unless you've got a time machine, you're going back 20 years to buy, it's kind of irrelevant now, other than the fact that maybe now we might say, is there a situation with it being overvalued? And by our model, we're significantly overvalued in this area, like 28%.

a good return in my mind.

Well, if you think about how many people earn over $100,000 a year in New Zealand, right? It's about 16%.

In Cromwell and in central Otago, it's about 10%, right? So we don't have as high of incomes.

But if we look at QV's data, what's the average house value in central Otago? About $900,000.

The glint of gold has drawn dozens of high-speed prospectors to Central Otago.

The World Gold Panning Championships is underway in Cromwell, where more than 150 international competitors are vying for top honors.

Otago/Southland reporter Katie Todd went along to watch today's action.

Three, two, one.

Go!

That starting call marks the beginning of a high-speed, high-stakes battle at Cromwell Racecourse.

Competitors have traveled from more than 20 countries for a turn standing in a series of water troughs, trying to prove their speed and precision sifting through a bucket of gravel.

From Czech Republic, pool number 16, Jury.

You've got Brisbane and where you bought in central Otago.

And I understand that it is Cromwell that you have bought into.

Now, one market offers a one bedroom apartment at a median price, while the other can provide hectares of land.

And that is what you have bought.

Is that right?

That's correct, Craig.

So in Brisbane, the price of apartments has absolutely skyrocketed over the last couple of years, whereas in Cromwell, which is a 45-minute drive from the International Airport in Queenstown, we were able to buy several hectares of land on the side of a mountain overlooking a beautiful town.

We actually have cherry farms surrounding us and we can see many wineries in the distance.

I'm Richard Badley.

Federated Farmers is urging Central Otago District Council to vote down a plan at tomorrow's meeting to truck thousands of cubic metres of treated sludge from Alexandra and Cromwell onto farmland near Lauder.

Fed's Otago president Anna Gillespie says it follows outrage over a similar consent that lets Wanaka truck its treated sewage to a Lord of Farm in what she calls a sensitive catchment where landowners have spent years improving water quality.

Gillespie says the council could save around $600,000 by spreading the sludge rather than trucking it to landfill, but argues the farm's dry, gravelly soils can't realistically absorb the volumes involved.