Monthly Property Insights

In the flurry of modern life it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of how each of the key economic and housing market variables are shifting from month to month, so here’s a quick round-up.

• Sales volumes – a national total of more than 83,000 in the past 12 months, up from the trough of less than 63,000 in mid-2023. There’s been pretty consistent growth for a number of months now, but the low starting point means they’re still a touch below ‘normal’.

• Property values – up by 0.3% in April, the fourth modest rise in a row, signalling that the downturn has come to an end, but also note that the ‘upturn’ is not exactly rampant. Hamilton and Christchurch were the strongest performing main centres in April.

• Listings – the weekly flows of new listings coming onto the market so far in 2025 have been pretty normal (following seasonal patterns), but with sales volumes at the other end of the pipeline only just getting back to long-term averages, the stock of available listings for sale remains elevated. Buyers retain a lot of the pricing power for now.

• Buyer Classification – after appearing to waver a little in the first few months of 2025, first home buyers were strong again in April, accounting for nearly 27% of property purchases. But mortgaged multiple property owners also remain on the comeback trail, accounting for 24% of deals in April, with lower mortgage rates a key factor in reducing the cashflow top-ups that typically required out of other income sources on a standard investment purchase.

• Housing rents – these were only up by 0.6% in the year to March (MBIE bonds data), with demand growth for property having slowed and the supply of available rental listings up. This is a challenge for investors at present, but obviously great for tenants.

• Mortgage lending – overall activity continues to rise, with debt to income ratio limits not a restraint to any great degree just yet. There’s a wave of ‘churn’ activity coming through as borrowers previously on floating or short-term fixed rates potentially start to fix longer again.

• The economy – there are some ‘green shoots’ starting to poke through for a range of monthly activity measures (e.g. manufacturing) and the unemployment rate may have finally found a peak at 5.1%. But it’s early days yet – with tariff uncertainty still high – and the cutting cycle for the official cash rate probably has a little further to run.
  

All in all, our expectation that 2025 would be ‘the year of conflicting forces’ in the housing market seems to be playing out, with lower mortgage rates supporting activity and prices, but other factors suppressing growth – such as the subdued economy and abundant listings levels.

Our central expectation that property sales volumes will rise from around 82,000 in the 2024 calendar year to about 92,000 this year remains on track, and even if first home buyers’ market share does slowly fade from its recent highs, they’re still likely to do more deals in a busier overall market. An indicative increase in house prices this year of 5% or so also remains plausible, but keep in mind that some areas will be lagging and other growing a bit more strongly.