The July 2025 Numbers
Statistics New Zealand recorded 33,879 new homes consented in the year ended July 2025 — a marginal 0.1 percent decrease on the equivalent 12-month period to July 2024. The headline number obscures significant movement beneath the surface. Auckland consented 14,295 homes over the period, a 3.2 percent increase, while Otago recorded the fastest growth in the country at 2,637 consents — a 48 percent increase year-on-year reflecting the sustained strength of the Queenstown and Dunedin markets.
Stand-alone house consents rose 1.7 percent annually — the first annual growth in this typology in two years. The residential market appears to be bottoming and beginning to differentiate, with growth strongest in the segments and regions where housing supply and demand dynamics are most acute.
The Apartment Story
The most striking component of the July data is Auckland’s apartment segment: 1,496 apartments consented, representing a 57 percent increase on the equivalent prior period. This surge reflects the multi-year effect of Auckland’s intensification zoning — the Medium Density Residential Standards and the National Policy Statement on Urban Development — creating conditions where apartment development is increasingly viable and attractive to developers who previously focused on townhouses or standalone residential.
For builders with capacity in the multi-unit space, Auckland’s apartment recovery is a meaningful forward signal. Apartment consents precede actual construction by six to twelve months and often more; the consent surge in mid-2025 points to an active apartment construction pipeline through 2026 and into 2027.
Market Dynamics
The median house price nationally remained steady at $770,000 year-on-year — a stabilisation that, combined with declining interest rates, is gradually improving the affordability calculation for buyers sitting on the sidelines. June sales fell approximately five percent on a seasonally adjusted basis, but vendors entering the market with realistic price expectations are reporting shorter time-on-market than at the depth of the correction in 2023.
Constraints on Delivery
Labour availability and supply chain lead times continue to limit the speed at which consented projects translate to completed homes. The construction sector’s workforce contracted through 2023 and 2024 as work dried up, and rebuilding that capacity takes time. Current consent volumes remain well below the 50,000-plus annual peak of 2022 — providing some buffer before the sector would face the acute capacity constraints that produced the delivery problems of that period. Managing the pace of recovery to maintain quality and programme certainty is one of the industry’s central challenges for 2026.
