West Coast, Southland, Taranaki and Otago were the only regions where sales in April were higher than a year ago.<\/p>\n
Westpac senior economist Michael Gordon said while April is typically a slow month because of the number of public holidays, sales were substantially lower than the same time last year. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile there were signs of the housing market emerging from hibernation in early 2026 as the economy started to gain momentum, the Iran war has removed much of that support,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSharply weaker consumer confidence, weaker employment prospects, and the potential for [Official Cash Rate] hikes to come sooner and faster, imply a much weaker outlook for the housing market.\u201d<\/p>\n
Infometrics chief forecaster Gareth Kiernan said one month\u2019s data wasn\u2019t enough to be certain of a weaker trend for the housing market.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, April\u2019s result fits with our expectations about the likely effects of the Iran war and higher fuel prices on the market, with sharply lower consumer confidence and increased uncertainty about economic prospects undermining people\u2019s willingness to make major financial decisions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kiernan said sales growth had been slowing before the Middle East conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe widespread nature of the slowdown in sales suggests that no regions will be immune to the pressure on confidence and activity in the housing market,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, the spectre of rising interest rates later this year is likely to be felt most acutely in regions where house-price-to-income ratios are highest, such as Auckland and Wellington.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to REINZ\u2019s Property Report, the national median price eased 0.6% year on year to $775,000.<\/p>\n
The median price in Auckland rose 2.5% to $1.02 million.<\/p>\n
Eight of the 16 regions recorded year-on-year increases in median prices, with the biggest gains in Southland and Northland (both +6.2%), Gisborne (+4.3%) and Waikato (+3.4%). <\/p>\n
ASB senior economist Kim Mundy said a broad house price recovery is unlikely to be a 2026 story.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe economic outlook is highly uncertain at this point, but the current trajectory suggests flat house price growth this year, with a non-negligible risk of a decline,\u201d Mundy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe absence of house price inflation means one less inflation fire for the [Reserve Bank] to fight, though it\u2019s only likely to be a modest offset at this stage.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"West Coast, Southland, Taranaki and Otago were the only regions where sales in April were higher than a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3225,95,54170,806,138,3237,802,4190,3592,28164,30271,2678,13484,24826,3594,10053,78,12469,4188,111,139,69,12937,13237,19257,7676,801,667,67730,72809],"class_list":["post-427865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-according","tag-and","tag-april","tag-as","tag-business","tag-buyers","tag-costs","tag-demand","tag-fall","tag-fears","tag-figures","tag-fuel","tag-higher","tag-hike","tag-hit","tag-house","tag-in","tag-interest","tag-living","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-prices","tag-prospect","tag-rate","tag-rates","tag-rising","tag-sales","tag-slid","tag-weighed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427865","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=427865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}