– Castle Hill, a ski village in the Southern Alps, is attracting buyers priced out of Queenstown and Wānaka.
– The village offers year-round activities like skiing, mountain biking and hiking, with homes priced from $300,000 to over $1m.
– A sales boom has led to several properties available, with modern builds and a strong community vibe.
With no shops, no fences and no queues, a ski village in the Southern Alps is quietly attracting the attention of buyers priced out of Queenstown and Wānaka.
Only 20 minutes from the slopes, Castle Hill is tucked between the Craigieburn and Torlesse mountain ranges, in Canterbury. It was founded in 1982 and has grown in size to more than 100 houses, with prices ranging from $300,000 for a section to well over $1 million for a luxury bach.
It’s also a tight community, with a hugely different vibe to the towns and villages in Queenstown-Lakes.
The four-bedroom home at Trelissick Loop has an alpine design and has been owned by the same family since the 1980s. Photo / Supplied
Harcourts agent Matthew Loose told OneRoof that there wasn’t a single shop in town. “Yet.”
The village is in the midst of a sales boom, meaning three houses and eight sections are up for grabs, although the deadline on one had closed at the time of publication.
When Loose and fellow Harcourts agent Paul Nichols realised they were listing homes for sale on the same day, they had a chuckle. Homes are so tightly held in Castle Hill that such a situation was unheard of.
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The village was originally developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s by John Reid, who owned Castle Hill Station many years ago and wanted to create an alpine resort.
“Initially, it was popular with people who went skiing, because there are five ski fields all within about 20 minutes of the village,” Nichols told OneRoof.
“It has grown more recently, with all the excellent mountain biking and walking trails. It’s now become a year-round playground. It’s also popular with hang gliders and paragliders because of the thermals in summer.”
Sections are hard to come by but this one at 48 Castle Hill Drive is for sale by negotiation. Photo / Supplied
Nichols said the village was great for families. “There’s a petanque court, tennis court, basketball court, all free for use. There’s a water slide, a normal playground, and all the walking trails in and around the bush. Kids go down to the stream and build dams. It’s got an outdoorsy feel.”
Nichols said the village’s position in a basin gave it a microclimate. “When it’s cold in Christchurch with an easterly wind, you come over Porters Pass and suddenly you’re in blue sky and calm weather. When it’s wet on the West Coast, once you get past Lake Pearson, you escape the rain again. It probably has more still, beautiful days than half the rest of the country,” he said.
From Castle Hill, State Highway 73 continues onto Arthur’s Pass. That makes the village easily accessible for West Coasters who want to ski.
Aiming to break the town’s house price record of $1.3m is 30 Castle Hill Drive, which is on the market for $1.35m. Photo / Supplied
The four-bedroom new-build home has plenty of luxury touches and makes the most of the dramatic scenery. Photo / Supplied
While ski fields were the original attraction to buyers, Castle Hill has many more summer and winter attractions. As well as mountain biking, hiking, and hang gliding, it has watersports as well, said Nichols. “Lake Lyndon is designated for water-skiing and boats. People with motorboats, jet skis or water skis go there. Lake Pearson and Grasmere don’t allow motorboats, so people kayak, windsurf, swim or fish.”
Other attractions include Cave Stream Scenic Reserve, which offers caving, and the limestone rock formations at Kura Tāwhiti Castle Hill Rocks.
There is an “ad hoc” golf course on land that Reid had hoped to sell for a resort in 2021, Nichols said. The resort didn’t go ahead, however. “That land could potentially be developed in the future.”
The agent is currently selling one of the original 1980s homes, at 28 and 30 Trelissick Loop, which has been owned by the same family since it was built.
Vendor Jenny Hassall’s parents Laura and Fred Allott bought the home new, back when there were just six homes in the settlement.
“My dad spent quite a few of his childhood years in Otira, on the other side of Arthur’s Pass. When my parents passed away, we [Jenny and husband Don] bought it off the estate,” she said.
Going to auction on August 14 is 3 Bevel Court. Photo / Supplied
The house was built by Fraemohs Homes, which is still in business today, offering Scandinavian-style plans. Unlike many homes of the era, it gets warm quickly when the wood burner is fired up and stays warm, Hassall said. She will miss the home, but is moving to Auckland to live near family.
Castle Hill started to expand in 2018, on land originally owned by Reid, with around 50 sections released since then.
Loose has sold most of them, and told OneRoof that early interest had caught him by surprise. “We had one of the project managers staking lot numbers on the sections, and the phone started ringing as we were putting the stakes in the ground. We hadn’t even started advertising them.”
At the time, the land was overgrown, with no infrastructure, no roading and no services, although it did have residential zoning.
Although earlier homes were similar in design to 28 and 30 Trelissick Loop, or in traditional log cabin style, more modern ones are popping up on the newly released land.
Thanks to covenants, the homes have to be alpine in style, with pitches of at least 40 degrees. Other rules include no brightly coloured roofs and no fences.
The sale of sections is largely coming to an end, although when land does come up for grabs, prices start from the mid-$300,000s, said Loose. Colleague Paul Nichols has listed a 700sqm section at 48 Castle Hill Drive with an RV of $430,000.
The highest residential sale price in the village is $1.3m, achieved in November 2023 for a four-bedroom luxury build on Cheeseman Terrace.
Aiming to break that record is a four-bedroom new-build home Nichols is selling for $1.35m at 30 Castle Hill Drive.
Elsewhere in town, and heading to auction on August 14 with Loose, is a three-bedroom new-build at 3 Bevel Court. It was built off-site and trucked into the village on a “very long truck” with the roof arriving separately, Loose told OneRoof.
The spec build home was cedar-clad, with internal wooden wall finish and engineered oak flooring. “It has high-spec insulation, heat pumps, and a wood fire. It’s over-insulated, double-glazed. It has all the modern comforts and bells and whistles, but still has that traditional wood cabin feel,” Loose said.
“It’s a good example of what modern architecture can do in terms of keeping a style, but making things look very modern in terms of convenient, healthy, warm living.”
He added: “There are lots of really cool, funky homes up there. Once owners get a house in place, very rarely do they sell.”
Loose said although the commercial land hadn’t yet been developed, he expected that to change now that more and more homes were being built.
“The commercial land has been designated for the general store, and I think ideally what would go in there is a licensed general store with a cafe attached. Someone could do pizzas or that sort of thing. It could be a central hub with maybe bicycle repair, ski hire, ski repair,” he said.
“It could be a good base for people who run adventure tourism businesses.”
– Click here to find more properties for sale in Castle Hill