New Zealand’s housing market cooled again in June, with both the number of homes sold and the underlying value of property slipping as a cold winter and higher borrowing costs kept buyers cautious. Figures released on 15 July by the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand show a market that is holding together at the national level while pulling apart into very different regional stories underneath.
The national median sale price came in at $770,000. That is up a slim 0.7 percent on June last year but down 1.3 percent on May, a sign that the modest recovery seen earlier in the year has stalled rather than kicked on. The REINZ House Price Index, which strips out the effect of which types of homes happen to sell in a given month and is the more reliable gauge of underlying values, fell 0.9 percent from May and was down 0.8 percent over the year. Across the three months to June the index dropped 2.4 percent, and it fell in eight of the twelve districts REINZ tracks.
Sales volumes tell the clearer story of a market losing momentum. There were 5,996 residential sales in June, down 11.0 percent on May and 2.9 percent lower than June 2025. Auckland bore the brunt of the slowdown, with sales down 13.3 percent on the previous month and 5.6 percent lower than a year earlier. Outside Auckland the fall was gentler but still firmly negative, with the rest of the country down 10.0 percent on May.
REINZ chief executive Lizzy Ryley said the headline numbers hide how varied conditions have become around the country. “The market continues to show signs of becoming more settled, but there is no single national story,” she said. She described the current picture as “a series of local markets moving at different speeds”, with the strongest activity now sitting well south of the main centres.
That divergence is stark. The West Coast posted the biggest annual median price gain of any region, up 12.9 percent to $474,350, while Canterbury lifted 5.2 percent to a median of $710,000. On the House Price Index measure Southland recorded the strongest annual growth at 8.6 percent, ahead of Otago at 4.3 percent. Two territorial authorities hit fresh record median prices, with the Grey District reaching $595,000 and the Central Otago District cracking the $1 million mark for the first time.
Wellington sat at the other end of the scale. The capital saw no change in its median price on a year earlier and recorded its longest selling times since 1992, a reminder that the southern lift has not spread evenly across the lower North Island. Auckland, meanwhile, is carrying plenty of unsold stock, with 3,088 new listings adding to an already well supplied market and giving buyers there little reason to rush.
One bright spot for sellers is that homes are still changing hands at a reasonable clip when they are priced right. The national median days to sell came in at 48, a day faster than June last year, suggesting the slowdown is showing up more in the number of deals being done than in properties sitting unsold for months on end.
The backdrop to all of this is the cost of money. The Reserve Bank lifted the Official Cash Rate to 2.50 percent on 8 July, its second move higher this year, and signalled that further increases are likely at coming meetings even if the timing is uncertain. The bank expects annual inflation to have peaked at 3.9 percent in the June quarter before easing back through the rest of the year. Higher wholesale rates feed fairly quickly into mortgage pricing, and analysis from interest.co.nz put June’s weakness down to a mix of a cold, wet winter, rising mortgage rates and broader economic uncertainty. With borrowers now facing the prospect of dearer money rather than the steady cuts many had banked on a year ago, the incentive to wait rather than buy has strengthened.
For first home buyers the picture is mixed. Flat or falling prices in Auckland and Wellington, longer selling times and a big pool of listings all hand more negotiating power to those with finance in place. Against that, the same rising rates that are cooling demand also lift the size of the mortgage repayment on any given loan, so the affordability gain from softer prices is being partly eaten up at the bank counter. Anyone weighing up the numbers can see how the two forces have moved over time in our house prices versus income tool, which tracks how many years of household income it takes to buy in the main centres.
Whether the market has found a floor or has further to fall will depend heavily on where the Reserve Bank goes next. If the bank follows through on its warning of more hikes, the caution that defined June looks set to carry through the traditionally quiet middle of winter and into spring, when sellers usually test the water again. For now the message from the data is one of a market treading carefully, steady in some regions, slipping in others, and waiting to see how high the cost of borrowing climbs.
What are you seeing in your local market, and are higher mortgage rates changing your plans to buy or sell? 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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