New Zealand first home buyers picked up 24,800 properties over the past 12 months, the highest annual total since the third quarter of 2021 and a sign that the country’s most cautious slice of the housing market is back at the table in serious numbers.
Data published by property analytics firm Cotality, and reported by RNZ this week, shows first home buyers accounted for 27 percent of all property purchases in the first quarter of 2026. That is well above the long run average of about 22 percent stretching back two decades, and confirms a recovery that began in late 2024 as mortgage rates rolled off their peak.
More than three quarters of the homes bought by first home buyers in the past year were standalone houses rather than units or apartments, suggesting that the people getting in are still buying the traditional Kiwi quarter acre dream, just on smaller sections than their parents.
The other striking figure in the Cotality data is that first home buyers now make up around 30 percent of all purchases in the middle 40 percent of the market by price, up from 21 percent in 2015. In other words, when a typical suburban family home in places like Mt Roskill or Hamilton East changes hands, it is increasingly going to a first time buyer rather than to an investor or a trading up family.
The national median price paid by first home buyers in the first quarter was $720,000, up modestly from $700,000 a year earlier. Cotality senior economist Kelvin Davidson said the small lift was a sign of a favourable market for new entrants.
“The median price so far has gone up to $720,000 from $700,000 last year but that’s not a big increase,” Davidson said in remarks reported by RNZ, adding that buyers are getting “bang for their buck” in current conditions.
Regional medians vary widely. Auckland sits at $900,000, Bay of Plenty at $733,000, Wellington at $730,000, Canterbury at $655,000, Southland at $489,000 and the West Coast at $407,500. The numbers underline how different the housing ladder looks depending on which town a young couple chooses to settle in, with a Westport buyer needing roughly $200,000 less in total mortgage than a Christchurch buyer for an equivalent first home.
Mortgage servicing costs have fallen sharply, and that is doing much of the heavy lifting in bringing buyers off the sidelines. Cotality estimates that the average monthly mortgage payment for a first home buyer outside Auckland is now about $130 lower than it was a year ago, and roughly $820 lower than at the 2024 peak. In Auckland the savings are larger again, with monthly payments about $180 lower than a year ago and $1,100 lower than two years ago.
Across a 30 year mortgage, those changes add up to tens of thousands of dollars in interest costs that buyers no longer need to find.
Lending behaviour has also shifted. The average loan to value ratio for a first home buyer is now 81 percent, up from a little under 77 percent in 2024. That tells us that more new buyers are getting into the market with deposits below 20 percent, made possible by Reserve Bank loan to value rule settings that allow banks to write a defined share of low deposit loans.
Davidson said that flexibility is meaningful. “Not even needing to save a 20% deposit is proving beneficial too,” he told 1News earlier in the year, citing Reserve Bank figures showing more than half of first home buyer loans in January and February this year were written at deposits below 20 percent.
Regionally the strongest first home buyer market shares in the first quarter were in Upper Hutt and Lower Hutt at 41 percent of all sales, Wellington city at 37 percent, Hamilton at 33 percent and Auckland at 30 percent. Lower Hutt has long been a quiet first home buyer hotspot thanks to its train link and relatively flat sections, while the Hamilton number reflects the steady migration of families chasing affordability up State Highway One.
The picture is not uniformly rosy. The lower quartile price across the entire housing market is now $600,000, and even with Kāinga Ora support and KiwiSaver first home withdrawals the cash deposit needed is still a sizeable hurdle in higher cost cities. Davidson described the deposit as “a sizeable chunk of cash, but still a lot more feasible for more people.” Banks are also still scrutinising debt to income ratios under Reserve Bank rules, and any return to higher mortgage rates would erode the affordability gains that have driven the recent wave of activity.
For now though, the data points to a market that is working better for first home buyers than at any point in roughly four years, a small but real piece of good economic news for younger New Zealanders weighing up whether to keep renting or to take the leap.
What do you think? Are first home buyers in your suburb finally getting a foothold, or does the market still feel out of reach? Leave a comment below and join the conversation.
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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