Is it actually a good time to buy a house?

1News

16-05-2025

Twice this week, first-home buyers have been told that now might be their big chance to get into the housing market.
First, QV said a lull in property values was giving first-time buyers a "rare opportunity".
Then, the Real Estate Institute acting chief executive Rowan Dixon suggested that, if first-home buyers were looking for a chance to get into the property market, it was a good time to do so.
"There is still plenty of stock there, particularly in the main centres, good pricing and low interest rates… if people can get into the market for their first home now is a good time to do it before maybe things start to pick up a bit more."
But just how great an opportunity is it, really?
RNZ looked at a number of factors that could help answer that question.
Interest rates have fallen significantly, which helps to make the prospect of servicing a mortgage a bit more palatable.
From a peak of about 7%, two-year home loan fixes are now about 5%.
That means, for a typical first home mortgage of $567,448, the weekly repayment would be about $700.
That's still about $60 more than the national average rental rate.
Usually, falling interest rates push up house prices, but that hasn't happened to a significant degree yet.
"There's a window where financing is cheaper but it hasn't quite flowed through to house prices as it might have done historically," Corelogic chief property economist Kelvin Davidson said.
Brad Olsen, chief executive at Infometrics, said rates were not expected to get back to the 2% levels seen through the Covid times. "Interest rates are down but to more usual long-term levels."
Nationally, house prices are still down about 15% from the peak, although they are still up 4% compared to five years ago.
Wellington's prices are furthest from the peak, still down more than 25%, Auckland's are down 21.6%. Auckland prices are now just 2.2% higher than they were five years ago. Wellington's are 1.5% higher.
Earlier data from Corelogic showed they were the areas that had the largest affordability improvements, bringing them close to long-term averages.
Places like Queenstown are a bit of an outlier, still up 9.1% on five years ago, and Christchurch is up 8.3%.
"Houses are more affordable than they were," Davidson said. "I still wouldn't say they are affordable as such - they're cheaper, but not necessarily cheap. But are house prices really going to fall significantly further from here? It seems unlikely. They'll probably turn around and rise a bit. There's a sense now that they're as cheap as they're going to be even if they're not necessarily cheap."
Some buyers' KiwiSaver accounts may have taken a hit through the start of this year due to market volatility.
Most of those could have shown signs of recovery over the past week.
Davidson said it was likely that people who were planning to buy in the near term had already shifted their money to conservative funds before the wobbles hit.
Buyers have a lot of choice at the moment, which gives them the upper hand.
In a buyers' market, they can take their time over their decisions and know they have a lot of options.
Realestate.co.nz says the amount of stock for sale was up 6.2% year-on-year in April.
Olsen said that meant buyers could bargain for a lower price and play sellers off against each other.
"If you want to get a sale and a possible buyer knows there is probably another house for sale down the road you'll be doing a fair bit to make sure your house gets sold."
But it's actually a good time to be a renter, too.
There is also a lot of rental stock on the market in lots of parts of the country, and advertised rents are dropping.
The picture isn't consistent across the entire country but it's taking longer than normal to rent in most places with the exception of parts of Canterbury and Hawke's Bay.
"You could make a case of why rush into it when you could get a good deal on a rental for a while and you're probably not going to get left behind by the housing market in the meantime," Davidson said. "In general terms renting is always cheaper than buying so nothing has really changed there… if you stuck to that line of argument no one would ever buy a house."
Buying a house usually means you need to have reliable income.
While the worst might be nearly over for the labour market, it's likely to be weak for a while to come, which could mean job losses are more likely and it could be harder to find a new job if you are unemployed.
Anyone who is worried about their job security might hesitate about buying a house.
"They might be able to afford the house at the moment but not if they lost their job and couldn't find a new one," Olsen said.
Davidson said you could argue that it's "always a good time to be a first-home buyer".
"In the sense that if you want to buy a house, like the house, like the location, you're secure in your job and you want security of tenure and you can secure the finance, you're going to be there for the long-term why wait?"
He said for many first-home buyers the decision was more than financial. "They're setting up a family base."
He said if people looked for negatives they would probably never do anything. "There are always pros and cons but if we're asking a binary question, is it a good time to buy, yes or no, I would have to say yes."
Olsen said he was always worried when people said buyers should "rush in".
"It comes across as scarcity marketing to scare people into rushing into buying. Buyers definitely have a good opportunity at the moment, that is true. But I think they should keep their wits about them, look at what's out there and how much they can afford, run some scenarios on what they could afford if things changed around mortgage rates or their job."
rnz.co.nz