Peter Williams has fallen for Wanaka: "The mountains, the lake, the fresh air and the (comparative) lack of people make it a place you can't help but love."

OPINION: Yes, I'm part of the baby boomer property-owning generation, and yes, on paper anyway, the last 40 years have been quite lucrative for hundreds of thousands of us.

So, at the age of 63, I can hardly make any apologies for owning two houses. Or more correctly, sharing the ownership of them with my wife.

As well as our place in Auckland, we bought a place in Wanaka last year. We're both from Otago. It wasn't a financial investment but a place to have fun in a town we really enjoyed as youngsters and to share with friends and family.

MARJORIE COOK/STUFF Peter Williams and wife Sara bought a four-bedroom home in Wanaka last year - one of many new houses being built. What's happened since then, he says, is a sideshow.

The mountains, the lake, the fresh air and the (comparative) lack of people mean you can't help but love it. Heck, we don't even put it on Airbnb.

READ MORE:

* Valuations reveal rich town/poor town divide

* Affordable housing a joke in Wanaka

* Rateable values up 28 per cent in Marlborough

* Broadcaster Peter Williams is leaving TVNZ

The Queenstown Lakes District Council valuation advice we received a couple of weeks ago suggested the value curve had kept rising at the same pace for the last 18 months. The new valuation is 45 per cent up on July 2014.

Sounds impressive, but not when the Wanaka average is 55 per cent and it's way below what's happening at Fernhill and Sunshine Bay, on the north side of Queenstown itself, where values are up an extraordinary 70 per cent in the last three years.

The increase on our Auckland property seems to be at about the same level. A private valuation earlier this year suggested a rise of about 50 per cent since July 2014. I expect the final number to be a little less than that.

From Auckland's St Marys Bay to Wanaka in Queenstown Lakes, Peter Williams watches his valuations skyrocket.

But let's not forget the implications.

Council valuations are used to set the rates. At the moment, the rates bills across the two properties come to more than $8000.

Next year, that number is likely to be in excess of $10,000. Our income won't have increased by 20 per cent.

NIKI DAVIES In parts of Queenstown, like Fernhill and Sunshine Bay, values are up an extraordinary 70 per cent in three years.

Might be time to sell up in Auckland and shift to Mt Maunganui.

Oh hang on ... what was that about a 40 per cent increase there?