The question we pondered this month was which type of property has provided the biggest capital gain in the past four years?

To answer this question we turned to property data website Homes.co.nz

They looked at prices over four and a quarter years from January 2012 to March this year, and compared prices in the Auckand and Wellington makets, arguably the two biggest apartment markets in the country.

If you had bought and sold in the Auckland market over this period you would not have been unhappy with the results. Both types of property did remarkably well. Auckland house prices were up 60.63% and apartments 57.21%.

In dollar terms it looks like this: Auckland’s average house sale price was $539,637 at the start of the period and finished at $986,206.

Meanwhile, Auckland’s average apartment sale price was $353,040 and rose to $634,777. It was a very different story in Wellington, both in the quantum of the returns and the direction.

The homes.co.nz data shows that house prices increased 35.59% over this period. However, apartment price growth was negative in Wellington, falling 11.31%. Wellington’s average house sale price was $462,815 in 2012 and reached $633,500 by 2016.

Homes.co.nz chief executive John Holt says that in comparison to Auckland, Wellington hasn't experienced the level of price pressure or population growth to create the mind shift towards apartments.

"I wouldn't expect to see the Auckland level of growth in apartments in areas where population growth is slow, although those investors motivated purely by yield may still benefit in a long term buy.”

Holt adds that homes.co.nz also has data which indicates that, in Auckland and Wellington, the smallest houses are seeing some of the biggest price changes. The data used in this analysis is for price changes only, it does not take into account yields.