A 'good' increase in unemployment?
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What recent trends are emerging in the New Zealand housing market?
it was sort of a so-called good increase in the unemployment rate.
Kia ora, and welcome to the New Zealand Property Market Podcast, brought to you by Cotality for the 9th of February, 2026. I'm Head of Research, Nick Goodall, and today I'm joined as per usual by Chief Economist, Kelvin Davidson. Kelvin, two pretty important releases last week, and we'll talk about those intriguing labour market stats shortly. But first, we have the first month's result for the housing market out with the Cotality Home Value Index for January now published.
what did it tell us mate and uh you're not allowed to use the term more of the same uh okay yep no well uh fairly flat um yeah i mean a continuation of recent trends whatever you want to call it um yeah minus 0.1 on the month uh yeah just a relatively flat result as i say now regional variability of course and that's been something that's been in play for a while too but Yeah. I mean, we saw, we saw that minus one minus 0.1%, I should say at the national level, um, that's on the month, uh, down, I think it was 1% year on year. So, so yeah, kind of treading water, whatever phrase you want to use without what you just said, um, Auckland down minus 0.3%. So it's, you know, been, been underperforming, I guess the rest of the country, um, good for buyers, of course, you know, not, not so great if you're trying to be a seller.
Um, And yeah, Christchurch was flat. I mean, other markets like to need an up slightly. So, you know, you've still got that regional variability going on. And we've we've talked about that for a while, too, in terms of You know, economic drivers, the fact that perhaps services sector is underperforming a little bit, that's kind of weighing on a market like Auckland, as well as the contrast with, say, farming sector going pretty well, that seems to be supporting maybe so-called provincial areas. And one market I didn't mention there was Invercargill still going up at a, Well, it's not booming, but at a slightly faster rate than elsewhere. And you'd think that would fit with affordability, but as well as that farming sector going pretty well.
So yeah, not the phrase you use, but sort of tracking sideways to a large extent.
How does the latest unemployment rate affect the housing market?
And it'll be disappointing for some, of course, and great for others. And of course, it's a good market for first home buyers at the moment. So always two sides of the coin in the housing market. I guess another thing we obviously can do through the HVI is to look at property types. Townhouses, I should say, standalone houses only, in air quotes, down minus 0.7% in the year to January. So, you know, that's kind of tracking sideways. Townhouses down 1.7% and apartments down 4.1%. So, you know, there's regional variability. There's also a bit of variability there by property type as well. Now, apartments are only about 4% of our housing stock and a lot of that's, you know, pretty much in central Auckland and central Wellington.
So it is really... sort of a niche segment, if you like, and isn't geographically spread. But yeah, perhaps a wee bit more weakness there for apartments. Not 100% sure why, but we can definitely speculate about possible reasons. And, you know, I've heard anecdotally some concerns about, you know, build quality on some of these projects, you know, people worried about buying an apartment and having some leaky home issues down the track. Not that that's going to apply everywhere, but that does seem to be a concern for some people. Body corporate fees going up, insurance fees going up, of course. And maybe the lack of net migration at the moment that would students, that sort of thing, potentially reduce the appetite to invest in apartments because you'll see investors tend to perhaps buy apartments a bit more often than owner-occupiers.
So maybe there's a few concerns there from the investment community about apartments. So maybe just keeping a bit more of a lid on prices there. So yeah, a bit of variability by region, a bit of variability by property type. But when you add it all up,
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What recent trends are emerging in the New Zealand housing market?
0:00–2:18
2
How does the latest unemployment rate affect the housing market?
2:18–6:35
3
What regional variabilities are observed in property performance?
6:35–9:07
4
What insights does the Cotality Home Value Index provide for January 2026?
9:07–16:02
5
How do different property types compare in terms of market performance?
16:02–28:03
Speakers
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