People are forking out more money to buy farms in the Bay of Plenty than anywhere else, according to figures released by the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand.

Median prices for Bay farms for the three months ending June 2016 is $169,500, while in comparison, median prices in the Waikato and Auckland for the same period are $39,141 and $53,550.

For Bay lifestyle blocks, the price in dollars per hectare is $396,660, compared with the Waikato price per hectare of $421,554 and Auckland lifestyle block price of $656,182.

By comparison the Gisborne prices are $18,472 median farm price and $193,300 price per hectare for lifestyle blocks.

The REINZ data also shows there were seven fewer farm sales (down 1.5 per cent) for the three months ended June 2016 than for the three months ended June 2015.

Overall, across the country there were 472 farm sales in the three months ended June 2016, compared to 489 farm sales for the three months ended May 2016 (down 3.5 per cent) and 479 farm sales for the three months ended June 2015.

In total, 1738 farms were sold in the year to May 2016, 0.1 per cent more than the number sold in the year to June 2015, with 28 per cent fewer dairy farms and 7 per cent fewer grazing farms sold over the same period.

But the lifestyle market continues to deliver record prices and sales volumes, with 401 more lifestyle property sales (up 19 per cent) for the three months ended June 2016 than for the three months ended June 2015.