Research News

The Reserve Bank (RBNZ) has decided to leave the official cash rate (OCR) on hold at 1.5%, but also dropped a pretty heavy hint of another cut in the coming months. Although this may not pass through to mortgage rates, it’s still a great time to be a borrower.

First home buyers are topic of the month for June, we check in their activity while also covering the latest in overall sales volumes and once again provide a word of caution around the misuse of certain statistics evaluating the market.

Residential property sales activity looks set to tick along at the same controlled pace in the second half of the year as it has in the first, with average values growing in a restrained fashion. Other key factors to watch over the rest of 2019 include policy decisions from the Reserve Bank (e.g. LVR and bank...

CoreLogic NZ’s latest ‘Mapping the Market’ (June 2019) report has just been released, using location analytics and geospatial expertise to give visual learners a better understanding of New Zealand’s property market.

Today’s Property Report release from REINZ reported that property values in NZ held constant (+0.2%) in the month of May. This is according to the REINZ House Price Index (HPI), which is a better measure for evaluating property market performance than median selling prices. This is because it measures the...

Looking at the leading individual suburbs for first home buyers (FHBs) in each of NZ’s ten largest cities, we see that the share of purchases going to FHBs has typically been more than 50% so far in 2019. These tend to be cheaper suburbs, such as Hei Hei in Christchurch and Stokes Valley in Lower Hutt. With...

The CoreLogic QV House Price Index showed that NZ average property values were flat in May and up by only 0.1% over the past three months. The annual growth rate slowed from 2.7% in April to 2.3% in May. With affordability still stretched in many parts of the country and sales volumes subdued, CoreLogic...

The price gap between three and four bedroom properties has fallen in many parts of the country over the past year, suggesting that it’s become a bit easier to ‘trade up’. The gap, or trade-up premium, is still sizeable in parts of Auckland, but this is also where property values have recently fallen the...

Our latest Pain & Gain Report is out, which shows that the quiet NZ property market for Q1 of 2019 delivered total nationwide resale gains of $2.9billion. This represents quite the fall from the previous quarter’s $4.4bn but it’s no surprise as volumes across the market were generally sluggish.

Despite Easter/ANZAC being close together and many people taking an extended holiday (rather than visiting the bank), mortgage lending activity was solid in April. Even so, the banks in aggregate are still operating well below the LVR speed limits, and interest-only lending to investors is contained too. Over...

Although it’s not law yet, the tax ring-fence for rental property losses is likely to be approved and, when that happens, will apply to the current tax year (which has of course already started). But there are reasons to doubt that it will dramatically change the rental property landscape.

Plenty to talk about this month, with the key influencers Government and RBNZ making a few big calls. Wondering about the Capital Gains Tax, Official Cash Rate and Foreign Buyer Ban? We look at the market impact of all.