$2,252 per square metre for bare dirt
When a commercial property broker says he has never seen anything like a listing, it is usually marketing patter. When Colliers broker James Valentine says it about three vacant titles at 13, 15 and 17 Glenda Drive carrying a combined rateable value of $7.7 million, it lands differently. The front title alone, 1,376 sq m of unimproved industrial land, is rated at $3.10 million, roughly $2,252 per square metre.
Valentine, who has worked the Queenstown commercial market for five years, told the Otago Daily Times: “It’s right in the heart of that top of Glenda Dr area which is becoming more of that flashy kind of trail retail, almost. I’ve been working the market for the last five years or so and I haven’t seen anything like this.”
The listing is notable simply for existing. In a market where there is literally nothing else available, a bare industrial site becomes a trophy asset.
Not low vacancy, zero vacancy
CBRE’s October 2025 survey of the Queenstown industrial market recorded zero vacant stock. CBRE Research Manager Jorge Chang Urrea was unambiguous: “Queenstown industrial was the only sector in New Zealand with no vacant stock in the first half of 2025. This result reflects an acute shortage of available space and sustained occupier demand across all submarkets.”
For comparison, prime office vacancy in Queenstown sits at 2.6% and secondary at 4.4%. Those are tight numbers. Industrial is in a category of its own.
The pipeline offers little relief. CBRE’s David Tristram, Valuation Director in Queenstown, notes that proposed sites in Gibbston Valley and Coneburn are among the only industrial land releases in the longer-term pipeline, while airport-adjacent land carries restrictive covenants that suit only a narrow range of users.
The councils already know the numbers are dire
A September 2025 Housing and Business Capacity Assessment commissioned jointly by the Otago Regional Council and Queenstown Lakes District Council puts hard figures on the problem. The short-term shortfall across all business sectors is approximately 85,300 sq m of floor space, or 12.4 hectares, primarily constrained by infrastructure. The medium-term industrial shortfall is 18 hectares. Over 30 years it blows out to 36 hectares for industrial use alone, plus three hectares each for retail and commercial.
These are not developer projections. This is the councils’ own modelling, built on a resident population forecast to reach 97,700 in 30 years, an 80% increase, with average daily population of 150,000 and peak days exceeding 220,000.
Growth running into a wall
Queenstown-Lakes District GDP grew 6.4% to March 2024 versus 1.4% nationally. Total business units in the district hit 10,896 in February 2024, up 6.8% year-on-year. In the 12 months to that date, 294 new construction businesses and 72 new transport, postal and warehousing businesses were registered. Every one of them needs physical space in a market with none.
Colliers’ Tim Thomas puts it plainly: “Rents in this prime hub have steadily risen in recent years as the lack of supply has driven strong demand for space in Frankton.” A tenanted industrial property at 132 Glenda Drive generates $399,349 plus GST in net annual rental income from 3,807 sq m. That is the benchmark for what prime Frankton industrial space costs to occupy.
Businesses are fleeing or trapped
CBRE’s survey documents the displacement already underway. Some industrial occupiers have relocated to Cromwell, 60 kilometres from Queenstown, because rents have risen past the point of viability. Others absorb the increases because relocation costs make moving equally uneconomic.
The only meaningful new supply is The Yards at Victoria Flats, Gibbston, Queenstown’s first industrial subdivision in more than a decade. Developer Dave Henderson describes Queenstown as having “Australasia’s dearest industrial land” and is pricing lots from $766,150 for 1,393 sq m, less than a quarter of Frankton rates. Valentine frames the opportunity: “It’s an amazing opportunity for owner-occupiers who are getting pushed out of Frankton, just by pricing.“
But Gibbston is not Frankton. For a trades business or logistics depot that needs to be near Queenstown’s core, a site halfway to Cromwell is a meaningful operational compromise, not a solution.
Every invoice carries the cost
Queenstown is running a tourism and services economy of significant scale on an industrial land base that was never adequate and is not being meaningfully expanded. The councils’ own assessment confirms a multi-decade shortfall. The pipeline is thin, covenant-restricted or distant. Zero vacancy is not a market milestone to celebrate. It is a market failure signal.
Every tradie, freight operator, cold storage provider and construction firm operating in Queenstown is paying a premium that flows directly into the cost of every service delivered in the district. That cost does not appear in tourism brochures. It appears on every invoice.
Sources
- ODT: Plum industrial land worth $7.7m on market (2025-06-10)
- OneRoof: Sizeable industrial holding in Queenstown hub (2025-06-10)
- ODT: Queenstown lots a rare industrial offering (2025-06-10)
- ODT: Residential housing tracking well but industrial land shortfall predicted (2025-06-10)
- Figure.NZ / Stats NZ: New businesses in Queenstown-Lakes District