The winning Powerball ticket was sold to someone in the Southland city - and the instant multi-millionaire had already claimed their $17.25m prize, Lotto NZ confirmed today.
Another three additional players will be walking away with $250,000 each with Lotto first division winnings.
The winner has just claimed their prize, Lotto has confirmed to the New Zealand Herald, but the town is still left to speculate over who it is.
"There’s a wee bit of buzz," said Nikki, a local shop owner.
"Customers are saying it’s going to help one family or another, hopefully the money goes somewhere it can be utilised."
Daniel, a dairy owner in the city centre, said a few of his customers had made remarks about the mystery winner - although most said they hadn’t bought a ticket themselves.
Millionaires aren’t in short supply near Daniel’s home in Windsor.
"It’s a higher-end area of town, there’s a few multi-millionaires driving their Porsches, Audis and such like around," he said.
"You could spend the money here - I don’t know of many properties over the million-dollar mark, but if it were me I’d be doing a lot of travelling."
The news might have reached the shop owners, but hadn’t quite met the ears of those at council - those the Herald spoke to said they hadn’t heard of the news yet.
District councillor Ian Pottinger said the windfall was great news for the township when he was told of the mega lottery win.
"Hopefully they unload it here in Invercargill," he said.
"It would be great for the local economy here if they were buying cars and houses and stuff. It would take a lot of thought to spend it wisely, that’s the key."
The town isn’t unfamiliar with big money victories, a shop on Windsor St brandished a sign 10 years ago reading that a $20 million ticket had been sold by them.
"You appreciate people keeping this anonymous, but it’s gonna be pretty hard," he said.
"If you go down to the local Liquorland and buy 10 boxes of Bombay Saphire and 20 Jose Cuervos, that’ll be a pretty dead giveaway."
The people of Invercargill appreciate their holidays, according to Pottinger, and why wouldn’t they - with Queenstown less than two hours drive north of the region.
It’s fair to say a local would consider spending their cash on a holiday home.
"I imagine if they love Invercargill, they’d make sure they got a nice house here and then a holiday home around Queenstown or Te Anau, those sorts of places," said Pottinger.
"And then lots of them are keen boaties, so a nice boat too. Outside of that, we’re not to keen on clothes here like those in Auckland."
When District Councillor Barry Stewart was asked whether the individual was likely to stay in Invercargill or head abroad, he was confident the winner would stick around.
"Invercargill is a pretty nice place."
"I’d think they’d stay here, it’s a pretty close-knit community."
How would one spend $17.25 million in New Zealand’s most southern city?
To help those more geographically challenged, the commercial hub of the South Island - Invercargill - is New Zealand’s southernmost city. Literally at the bottom of the island.
The city has a population of little over 54,000 residents, is home to a plethora of heritage buildings, boasts long summer daylight hours and provides frequent appearances of the Aurora southern lights.
A standard home in Invercargill will cost you $485,000, locals will pay $408 a week on average for rent and less than 14% of the city earns more than $70,000 a year.
So in summary, it’s a pretty nice patch of the country that seems to get on with its business, welcomes tourists and helps out the agricultural lifeblood of the country’s south.
And somebody living in this city has just gotten $17.25 million richer.
For the sake of answering the question of how I’d spend this money, let’s assume the person stays instead of heading north or crossing the ditch to Australia (which everybody now seems to be doing).
A quick search reveals the Richardson family, with a net worth of $320 million also live in Invercargill, but the new Lotto champion still be one of the richest people in Southland.
Not a bad title to have.
Property
Staring at the eight-digit sum in my bank account, the first thing our new multi-millionaire is likely to do is head straight for real estate websites to get into the property market.
A rather lovely mansion on Ryal Bush Wallacetown Rd is on the market for $2.7 million. It’s called "Grinaldi Lodge" and boasts four bathrooms, an orchard, tree-lined paddocks and an automatic gate.
Sound like the ideal pad for the new rich-lister, but why stop at one mansion?
They’re different styles, one’s more modern and the other more classy, but our Lotto winner could easily take them both.
Now, if this winner wanted to be more financially savvy for the future - or in other words, more boring - they could look at purchasing a larger number of cheaper homes in Invercargill and rent them out for a sustainable income.
To do that in Invercargill, they could dedicate less than $4 million and purchase twelve homes ranging from two to three bedrooms each.
Twelve rental properties should be enough to keep the dough flowing in.
So now our Lotto winner would have fifteen properties to their name - three of them mansions and the rest for their future-self to appreciate, and they’d still have $7.5 million left to splash.
Cars and possessions
While it’s hard to know anything about the winner and their interests, an inevitable purchase for most Lotto winners is a nice car.
So what’s on the market that’s guaranteed to make every head on Queens Drive turn and draw a wonderful chorus of wolf whistles?
A quick scroll through TradeMe provides us with a Lamborghini Aventador for sale for $1.2 million.
It’s in Tauranga, but let’s face it, a Lotto winner with more than $7 million left in the bank isn’t worried about the cost of transporting it to the bottom of the country.
For a healthy sum of $139,900 our winner could purchase a Southern Sports 24ft boat, for sale in Invercargill to be picked up locally.
Or perhaps they have a love for fishing, in which case a fishing trawler that was built in the year 1935 is up for grabs and would make the perfect purchase for $25,000.
Heck, why not buy them both?
Holidays and trips
As pointed out by the District Councillor, those living in Invercargill enjoy their holidays and would likely enjoy a trip up north.
Queenstown is the likely destination for somebody living in the Southland township, so what about a yearly retreat and enjoy the best Queenstown has to offer?
A seven-night stay up on Coronet Peak at the QT Hotel, along with a five-day mountain pass will set you back $2,210 for each stay.
Do that three times a year for the next forty years? That’s a $265,200 bill that I’m sure our new Lotto winner will be happy to foot.
If our winner was feeling a little bored from all the snow, they might chose to instead experience the best of New Zealand’s national parks and hikes with The Grand Explorer package.
The luxury experience, including helicopter trips, wine tasting and whale watching will cost $16,699 per person.
Sure, that’s a hefty bill for the average working Kiwi - but an Invercargill-based multi-millionaire could spend $66,769 to do it once every ten years for four decades.
And adding that to every other thing they’d have bought to this point, our lucky Lotto victor would still have $5.8 million left to spend.
For good measure, a 35-day tour of Europe through Contiki would cost $15,512 per person, or 27 days in Asia which would set you back $8,550.
Both those trips with two others would cost $72,186.
If this Invercargill winner was an absolute travel machine and wanted to do these trips, every year for the next forty years, they would spend $2.8 million.
And still - they would have a little under $3 million to play with.
