New Zealand property sellers are taking the biggest hits seen in years, with new figures from property data firm Cotality showing 12.2 percent of all residential resales in the first quarter of 2026 went through at a price below what the owner originally paid. Apartments were the worst affected, with 41.1 percent of resales producing a loss, the highest share recorded since 2011.
The numbers come from Cotality’s latest Pain and Gain report, which tracks the gap between purchase and resale prices across the country. The result is a sharp reversal from late 2021, when fewer than 1 percent of sales ended in a loss. Five years and one long downturn later, more than one in ten transactions is now leaving someone out of pocket before agent fees and renovation costs are even counted.
Auckland is the worst region. Cotality found 19.9 percent of Auckland resales lost money in the quarter, with a median loss of $77,000. Wellington was next, with 16.7 percent of sales unprofitable and a median loss of $86,120, the largest dollar figure of any major centre. Palmerston North also stood out, with 17.4 percent of sellers landing in the red. Hamilton recorded 13.1 percent, Tauranga 9.6 percent, Dunedin 7.9 percent, and Christchurch held up best at 4.7 percent.
Apartments dragged the national figure down. Owner-occupiers selling standalone houses generally still came out ahead, but apartment owners did not. Cotality’s chief property economist Kelvin Davidson told RNZ that the picture for that part of the market was bleak but not catastrophic. “I don’t think apartments are necessarily collapsing, the figures aren’t strong by any means but it’s not as if people are abandoning apartments,” he said.
Davidson said the underlying problem was straightforward. “We’re in a buyer’s market, lots of choice, prices are flat, so that’s working against resellers,” he said. He added that the small unit market in the country’s biggest city had been a particularly difficult place to own. “If you’re an Auckland seller of an apartment and you’re an investor, it’s been a tricky few years,” he said.
The Pain and Gain numbers also reveal how long the unlucky sellers had been holding their property. The median hold period for a loss-making sale was 4.2 years, compared with 10 years for a profitable sale. In other words, the people losing money tend to be those who bought near the top of the 2021 peak and are now selling into a flat market that has not given prices time to recover. Those who bought earlier in the cycle and held on are still walking away with a median gain of $285,000, although that is down from a peak of around $440,000.
Investors are bearing more of the pain than owner-occupiers. Cotality recorded 13.7 percent of investor sales at a loss, the highest share since 2012, against 11.1 percent for owner-occupiers. Apartments are over-represented in investor portfolios, which helps explain the gap. Davidson said apartments tended to have less growth in value over time, a feature of the market that becomes much more visible when capital gains dry up.
Even with the losses, Davidson said sellers had seen worse. “Things are not great for sellers at the moment but it has been worse in the past even though this downturn in property values has been bigger,” he said. Compared with the post-2008 slump, sellers today are at least benefiting from a longer ownership window, which gives them more original price to fall back on.
Activity in the market is thin. Around 21,850 listings were pulled from sale during 2025, the highest count since 2018, and Cotality estimates 25 to 30 percent of homes currently listed will fail to find a buyer. Vendors who can sit tight are doing so, while those who must transact are accepting offers that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
The Q1 picture also lands against a soft wider housing market backdrop. Westpac economists have warned that elevated living costs flowing out of the Middle East conflict will keep a lid on housing demand for the rest of 2026, suggesting more of the same is on the way. With wage growth modest, interest rates still elevated, and the construction pipeline holding up only because of a 14.6 percent rise in new home consents, the housing wealth effect that supported consumer spending through the last cycle is firmly switched off.
For the four in ten apartment sellers writing cheques to close a sale rather than collecting one, the Pain and Gain numbers are not just statistics. They are a reminder that property losses, long considered a feature of overseas markets, have returned to New Zealand in a way the country has not seen in more than a decade.
What do you think about the state of the housing market? Are you a buyer, seller, or watching from the sidelines? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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