Articles

Expectations of a housing market pick-up during 2025 are mounting, with the Reserve Bank having cut the official cash rate by 125 basis points in the last four months. We look at the latest indicators to assess how much substance there might be to the market’s upturn.

Building costs, like prices across most of the economy, surged higher between 2021 and 2023, as a result of supply chain disruptions, capacity constraints, labour shortages, and strong demand conditions.

We are introducing a new indicator for first home buyer activity – First Home Loans. This article explores first home buyer activity in the housing market from a few different angles and introduces our new measure.

Housing affordability is an important issue affecting the wellbeing of households. Recently, we dove deeper on housing affordability for two Waikato Region clients. This article explores several new ways of exploring local housing affordability to inform decision making.

Despite being a relatively small country internationally, New Zealand is geographically diverse enough that there is never a single economic "story". One example of this can be seen if we divide the country up into "Metro", "Provincial" and "Rural" areas and examine rental affordability.

The government has relaxed tax rules for property investors, and will do so again in April next year, and it has also reduced the bright-line test. But since March, seasonally adjusted house sales volumes have slipped to a 15-month low.

New analysis by leading New Zealand economic consultancy Infometrics has found that the short-term rental accommodation (STRA) sector has a limited effect on rental prices and no significant effect on house prices across New Zealand’s major urban areas, with population and interest rates having the greatest influence on rents and house prices.

Estimating underlying demand for housing is an inexact science, because people’s preferences about the number of people per household, or the proportion of vacant dwellings, can never be observed.

The housing market has been one of the key indicators of increasing stress for households over the last few months. After a mild but short-lived rally during early and mid-2023, buyer demand has softened again, as mortgage rates remain high and expectations of interest rate cuts by the Reserve Bank get pushed further into the future.

The stock of homes available for purchase on realestate.co.nz increased in February to its highest level since 2015, as more people listed their properties for sale. In the last five years, monthly new listing numbers onto the market have only been higher than February’s total...