Tuffley said the overall property market remains sluggish, with Wellington in particular weighed down by weak sentiment and a soft job market. He pointed out that South Island housing markets have held up better than many North Island counterparts.<\/p>\n
Auckland\u2019s affordability improves<\/p>\n
Auckland climbed five places to fifth on the Scoreboard, helped by stronger retail activity and improving consumer confidence. Tuffley said lower mortgage rates are already making a difference for buyers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAuckland is turning around,\u201d Tuffley told NZ Adviser.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the plus side we have mortgage rates coming down, which shifts affordability quite a lot. Bank stress test rates are now back below 7%, which is not too far above what they were when mortgage rates were at their lows back in 2020-21. That\u2019s really going to help people\u2019s ability to buy a home in Auckland.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that job growth remains weak and migration is easing from 2023 highs, which will limit population-driven demand. Even so, he expects a gradual lift in sales as borrowing costs fall. Stock levels remain high, so prices are likely to stay flat even if turnover improves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tuffley said the overall property market remains sluggish, with Wellington in particular weighed down by weak sentiment and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[25286,138,6338,220,111,139,69,25287],"class_list":["post-24883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-markets","tag-asb","tag-business","tag-housing-market","tag-markets","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-regional-economic-scoreboard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}