New Zealand leads global house price bust

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Goldman Sachs (via Shane Oliver on Twitter) has published the below chart tracking the house price busts across various developed nations:

Global house price bust

Source: Goldman Sachs

New Zealand leads the decline, with values down 17.6% from their November 2021 peak, led by Auckland (-22.8%) and Wellington (-25.6%):

New Zealand house price decline

Source: REINZ House Price Index (via Tarric Brooker)

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Interestingly, home values across various countries (i.e. Australia, Canada, US, Germany and the UK) are seeing a stabilisation/rise in home prices as the ‘shock’ of interest rate hikes wears off.

New Zealand is the outlier, however, with prices still falling at a solid clip.

Interestingly, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has revised its projection for home prices and now expects a significantly smaller overall decline than it projected in its previous detailed set of forecasts in February:

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In February, the Reserve Bank said:

“House prices are projected to keep falling in 2023, consistent with very low sales volumes in recent months”.

“House prices are assumed to have fallen by around 23% from their peak in 2021 to their trough in mid-2024, before recovering as interest rates decline toward their neutral setting”.

But in its latest Monetary Policy Statement released this week, the Reserve Bank forecast a “less negative outlook for house prices” with “house prices are assumed to fall by less over coming quarters than assumed in the February Statement”:

House price forecast
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“The rapid return of net immigration, an increase in the number of residents due to the one-off 2021 resident visa, strong nominal wage growth, stable mortgage interest rates, and a relatively low number of houses available for sale have contributed to a smaller decline in house prices than expected in recent months”, the Reserve Bank says.

The Reserve Bank also expects New Zealand house prices to rebound in 2024.

About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.