House sales fall 10 percent in July while one in eight sellers takes a loss

New Zealand’s housing market slowed again in July, with sales down 10 percent on the same month last year and homes sitting unsold for longer than in almost any July on record.

Figures released by the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand on Thursday morning show 6,090 residential properties sold during July, down 10.0 percent on July 2025. The national median sale price was $760,000, down 0.7 percent year on year, while the institute’s House Price Index eased 0.4 percent to 3,550.

The clearest sign of the slowdown was how long houses took to shift. The national median days to sell was 50, two days longer than a year earlier and the fifth slowest July since REINZ records began in 1992. Unsold stock piled up as a result, with inventory reaching 33,252 properties, up 9.3 percent, even though the flow of new listings barely moved, falling 0.5 percent to 7,698. In other words, the stock is building because houses are not selling, not because more people are trying to sell.

“There is still activity in the market with people buying and selling property every day,” said REINZ chief executive Lizzy Ryley. “What has changed is the pace. Buyers are taking time to carefully consider their options, and sellers are sometimes allowing more time for the right buyer to come along.”

REINZ was careful to put the sales figure in context. Measured against 35 years of records, July 2026 sits around the historical midpoint for the month. This is a market running slowly rather than one that has seized up.

A second set of numbers published the same morning shows who is wearing the cost of that slow drift. Property data firm Cotality found that 13.1 percent of homes resold in the June quarter changed hands for less than the owner paid, or almost one in eight, the highest share since 2012. In early 2022 the figure was under 1 percent.

The typical loss was $60,000. The 86.9 percent of sellers who still made money took a median gain of $280,000. Both figures exclude agent commission and maintenance spending, so the real losses are larger and the real gains smaller than the headline numbers suggest.

What separates the two groups is almost entirely timing. Owners who sold at a loss had held the property for a median of 4.3 years, which places their purchase squarely in the 2021 and 2022 price peak. Those who sold at a gain had owned for a median of 10.4 years. Investors were only slightly more likely to sell at a loss than owner occupiers, at 13.5 percent against 12.2 percent.

“Property values peaked in early 2022 and have been through more than four years of falls and stagnation since,” Cotality chief property economist Kelvin Davidson said.

Davidson said the downturn is not producing the forced selling seen in earlier cycles. “We’re not seeing the same widespread repayment problems or mortgagee sales in the current cycle, partly reflecting stronger [debt] serviceability testing within the banks,” he said. On the softer job market, he added that “the rise in unemployment has come from more labour supply rather than mass job losses too”.

Read side by side, the two data sets point the same way on the map. The losses cluster in the north. Cotality put the share of loss making resales at 20.9 percent in Auckland and 18.4 percent across the Wellington region, against 8.0 percent in Dunedin and 5.3 percent in Christchurch. The REINZ activity figures line up with that. Otago’s House Price Index hit an all time high of 4,366 in July, beating its own earlier 2026 peak, and Canterbury’s 1,085 sales were the fourth highest July since 1992. Wellington managed 524 sales, equal fifth lowest on record, with a median 55 days to sell, the third longest July result REINZ has recorded.

Ryley tied that north and south divide to jobs. “Interest rates, inflation and the election affect everyone, but local employment and regional economic strengths can make a significant difference to how those pressures are felt,” she said. Labour market figures released by Stats NZ on 5 August put unemployment at 6.0 percent in the North Island against 3.7 percent in the South Island, with the national rate at 5.6 percent, its highest in more than a decade. “Where employment is holding up, the property market is generally holding up, too,” Ryley said.

Eight of the 16 regions recorded higher median prices than a year ago. The West Coast led at $390,000, up 14.7 percent, although from a thin base of 35 sales, followed by Gisborne at $625,000, up 9.6 percent. Marlborough rose 7.1 percent to $675,000, Waikato 3.4 percent to $760,000 and Northland 3.1 percent to $675,000. Sales volumes were lower year on year in 13 of the 16 regions, with Gisborne the standout exception at 15.2 percent higher.

Auckland’s softness shows up at the suburb by suburb level. Of the region’s seven territorial authorities, only North Shore City recorded a higher median price than July 2025, up 0.9 percent. Auckland listings rose 9.4 percent to 3,075. Southland was the only region in the country where unsold inventory fell over the year, while Taranaki recorded the largest increase.

REINZ pointed to the Reserve Bank’s July decision to lift the official cash rate to 2.50 percent, continuing cost of living pressure and the November general election as the main influences on sentiment. Members reported a wait and see mood among some buyers, sellers and investors as the vote approaches.

“Our members generally expect conditions to remain relatively steady in the near term, with some anticipating activity will build as winter ends,” Ryley said. “Interest rates, household costs and spring listings will all influence what happens next.”

That spring test is the one to watch. Inventory is already more than 9 percent up on a year ago, and the extra listings that usually arrive in September and October will land in a market where buyers have shown they are in no hurry. For the group Cotality identified, the people who bought around four years ago and now need to move, another slow season is the difference between waiting and taking the $60,000 hit.

Are you buying or selling this spring, or holding off until after the election? Tell us what you are seeing in your part of the country 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 🙂