31 articles
ASB’s Q2 2026 Regional Economic Scoreboard left Wellington joint last with Gisborne while Canterbury led on dairy cash, jobs and retail. The capital’s multi-quarter underperformance is structural: public-service consolidation, a deep housing correction and stalled population growth colliding with a national OCR still set for nationwide inflation.
Australian-based users viewing New Zealand property listings jumped 190% year-on-year in August, realestate.co.nz said, after Canberra tightened capital gains and negative gearing rules on new residential investments.
Councils will be able to charge development levies from 2029, and must from 2030, replacing development contributions after DIA and HUD analysis showed a funding gap of up to $11 billion this decade.
Official modelling shows 26,000 Pacific families will lose an average $30.75 a week from April 2027 under the Budget 2026 housing support package, the steepest ethnic average loss among losers.
The average KiwiSaver balance crossed $40,000 for the first time in the year to 31 March 2026, the FMA reported, as funds under management reached $138.8 billion and members paid $978.2 million in fees.
ASB says nationwide house prices remain about 15% below peak in nominal terms and 30% lower in real terms, with flat 2026 medians and only a late-decade reclaim of late-2021 highs as OCR rises squeeze mortgage serviceability.
Major-bank specials still price six-month fixes near 4.75% and one-years just under 5%, while two-to-five-year money sits only 0.4–0.7 percentage points higher. That flat curve makes multi-year certainty unusually cheap after the OCR lift to 2.75%.
From December 2026, Active Investor Plus Growth applicants can count approved managed funds that support Build to Rent toward their NZD $5 million New Zealand investment, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford announced.
The Crown has vested with rights to $2,377.28 linked to the estate of late Queenstown hotelier Kevin Carlin after removal of Ex CHPML Limited from the Companies Register, Treasury has notified under section 324 of the Companies Act 1993.
New Zealand banks wrote $1.261 billion of new mortgages above 80% LVR in July 2026, double July 2019. First-home buyers took $850 million of that flow and paid low-equity margins that special-rate borrowers avoid.
New Zealand dwelling values have drifted sideways for about 36 months since the autumn-2023 trough. If the grind lasts into autumn 2027, it would eclipse the 45-month 1997–mid-2001 spell that BNZ flags as the modern benchmark.
Stats NZ annual average unemployment for the year to June 2026 runs from 8.1% in Northland to 3.8% in Tasman/Nelson/Marlborough/West Coast, matching Kiwibank’s multi-speed recovery map.
Cotality puts about 3,600 first-home buyers in negative equity after the 2021–22 peak. ANZ has already lifted floating home-loan rates 25 basis points after the OCR moved to 2.75%.
ANZ and Westpac have lifted floating home-loan rates by a full 25 basis points after the Reserve Bank’s move to 2.75%, adding roughly $48–$58 a fortnight in interest on a typical $500,000–$600,000 mortgage while many deposit accounts rose by far less.
The Government has introduced a KiwiSaver bill fixing two rules that blocked farm workers and first-time farm buyers from first-home withdrawals available to other members since 2010.
Opportunity’s Tax Reset would raise about $24.3 billion a year from a national land value tax, pay a $19,400 Citizen’s Income, and leave roughly $4 billion of claimed fiscal headroom—set against Treasury’s $11.9 billion OBEGALx deficit in 2025/26.
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has opened a short public consultation on six clusters of Hamilton multi-unit housing rules after an investigation found some may raise development cost and complexity.
The Government will amend the Local Government Act 2002 so councils can update Development Contribution policies after Fast-track applications, recovering growth infrastructure costs from future out-of-sequence and cross-boundary projects as an interim bridge to Development Levies from 2029.
New Zealand recorded 111 mortgagee sales in the second quarter of 2026. The figure stands well below the peaks recorded during the global financial crisis.
Budget 2026 allocates $400 million over four years to an Incentives for Growth Fund that pays councils directly for each new home consented, with payments starting in April 2027.
Stride Property Group lowered its bank loan-to-value ratio to 34 percent in the year to 31 March 2026 while holding its dividend at 8.0 cents per share. The moves illustrate how Reserve Bank of New Zealand interest rate cuts have improved cash flow for commercial property borrowers.
Wellington City Council has approved an average 5.8% rates increase for the 2026/27 year, the lowest since 2020 and below Auckland's 7.9% rise.
Auckland councillors voted 14 to 7 on 26 May 2026 to approve Mayor Wayne Brown's 2026/27 annual budget, delivering an average 7.9 percent increase in residential rates.
Around 43 percent of New Zealand residential mortgage debt will reprice in the next six months, driving many households toward higher costs even while the Reserve Bank holds the Official Cash Rate at 2.25 percent.
The High Court has ordered Australian crypto investor Daniel Klaus to pay $350,000 in penalties for breaching the Overseas Investment Act in a $4.5 million Hawke's Bay farmland purchase.
Auckland Council is finalising a 7.9 percent rates increase for the average residential property in the 2026/27 Annual Plan. The rise adds roughly $320 a year to bills and stems directly from $235 million in annual operating costs for the City Rail Link.
The Government will increase the minimum rent contribution for social housing tenants from 25 per cent to 30 per cent of income from April 2027, lifting weekly costs for around 84,000 households by an average of $31 while generating $387.5 million in operating savings over the forecast period.
The net share of Auckland households expecting house prices to rise over the next year has more than halved to 14 per cent in the three months to April 2026, the largest regional drop recorded in the latest ASB Housing Confidence survey.
Auckland’s City Rail Link will carry its first paying passengers in the third or fourth week of July 2026 after safety testing ends in early June.
Angela Fang's 2026 Rod Oram Memorial Essay Prize win spotlights how tax settings and planning rules have distorted New Zealand housing into an investment vehicle rather than stable shelter. Policy must now prioritise supply through restored interest deductibility and flexible rules while curbing immigration-driven demand pressures.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has positioned New Zealand's absence of a comprehensive capital gains tax as a competitive advantage, directly targeting Australian investors angered by Canberra's May 2026 budget reforms that will impose a 30% minimum tax rate on realised gains from 1 July 2027.
