Report.
APARTMENT & RESIDENTIAL
Part of the group with a family factor.
Contents.
04.
Market CommentNot Out of the Woods Yet... But, Signs of Optimisim. 06.
Auckland Central Sales & Statistics - August 2025
10.
Grafton & Eden Terrace Sales & Statistics - August 2025 16. Auction Update with Cameron Brain
18.
Article – Tony Alexander: Cash-strapped Kiwis drop the shop - here’s where they’re making cuts
20.
Our month in Review Top Stories & Events from the City Realty Group 24.
Article – Kelvin Davidson: Whatever happened to New Zealand’s housing shortage crisis? 28.
26.
LoanMarket Update: Cuts Continue, Outlook Still Unclear
Our Awards & Accolades 30. Ray White Auckland Central & Wynyard Quarter
Auckland, September 2025
The latest data and market insights suggest that while challenges
An extract from the REINZ Property Report (September) highlights the cautious but shifting sentiment:
“Market sentiment was influenced by buyers adopting a wait-and-see approach, lower interest rates, and increased buyer caution. Local salespeople are cautiously optimistic that there will be incremental improvements over the next few months. However, they mention that it much depends on factors like the job market, and further OCR reductions.” – Lizzy Ryley, Chief Executive AREINZ.
Interest Rates and Economic Signals
“Predictions are that there may be further OCR cuts before the end of this year,” says Daniel Horrobin, Director of City Realty Group, “with two more announcements planned for 8 October and 26 November. As more borrowers come off fixed terms and begin to benefit from lower rates, we hope to see more disposable income filter into the economy, with confidence in the property market lifting alongside.”
Fresh economic data reinforces this. The NZ Herald reported a 0.9% fall in GDP, well beyond Reserve Bank forecasts. Economists now believe this could trigger sharper OCR cuts than previously expected.
Meanwhile, Realestate.co.nz reported a boost in supply and buyer activity in August, with over 8,500 new listings added – up 9% yearon-year – supported by another OCR cut.
Activity Across City Realty Group
“Activity-wise across our Group, open home statistics for August were extremely encouraging,” Horrobin reports.
• 769 Open Homes conducted in August –up 54.2% from July
• 452 properties opened to the market – up nearly 60%
• 504 buyer attendees recorded – a 33.3% increase month-on-month
• Central city apartment market alone saw 529 Open Homes (+66.3%), drawing 239 buyers (+57.2%)
On the auction floor, August ended with strong results.
A Princes Wharf penthouse donated to Auckland University sold for $750,000 –$200,000 above the pre-auction offer – sold by the University to fund seismic engineering research.
A dual-key apartment in Whitaker Place attracted five bidders and 36 bids before selling under the hammer.
“These results send a strong message to those waiting on the sidelines for the market to improve,” says Horrobin.
Rental Market Shifts
Data from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment shows the national median rent in the three months to May fell 0.3% year-on-year, the first decline since 2009. In Auckland, rents fell 2.0%, reflecting weaker tenant demand, while net migration gains in the 12 months to July dropped by 91% compared to two years ago.
Looking Ahead
“Predicting the future is challenging,” Horrobin notes, “but the long-term indicators give cause for optimism.”
Economist Tony Alexander, writing in NZ Herald OneRoof (17 September), noted that while many businesses misjudged 2025 as a “booming year,” survey results suggest confidence is shifting toward 2026.
He also emphasised the timing lag of interest rate changes:
“It can take 18–24 months for higher interest rates to deeply affect the economy, and a similar period for falling rates to flow through. Rates have now been declining for 13 months, so we are getting closer to seeing greater willingness to spend.”
Final Word
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” concludes Horrobin, “but there are encouraging signs we’re heading in the right direction.”
Auckland Central Market Statistics.
Total Sales
August 2025
63
August 2024
There was a -42% decrease in the total number of sales year on year.
Total Sales Value Median Sales Price Median Days On Market
August 2025
$33,766,500
August 2024
August 2025
August 2024
109 $48,062,040 $301,000 35
There was a -29% decrease in the total sales value year on year.
Source: REINZ
There was a 2.9% increase in the total median sale price year on year.
August 2025
$309,900 50
August 2024
There was an 42% increase in the total median days on market year on year.
Recent Sales.
AUCKLAND
Eden Terrace
EDEN TERRACE MARKET STATISTICS. AUG 2025
2
$1,108,000 Total Sales Value 111 Median Days on Market $554,000 AUGUST 2025 AUGUST 2025
EDEN TERRACE - RECENT SALES.
Source: REINZ
STATEMENT:
Ray White repeatedly achieves higher sales prices than other agencies, and it’s not just our claim— here are the facts:
301/83 Halsey Street, ‘Lighter Quay’
1 1 0
SOLD WITH RAY WHITE
Sale Price: $150,000 + GST
($172,500 incl GST)
Sale Date: 24th of October 2024
201/83 Halsey Street, ‘Lighter Quay’
1 1 0
SOLD BY ANOTHER AGENCY
Sale Price: $50,000
Sale Date: 6th November 2024
* IMPORTANT NOTE: Both units are identical with just one floor level separating them, yet Ray White sold for $122,500 more than the other agency.
Request an appraisal today.
Ray White Auckland Central is your home for apartments.
305/8 Ronayne Street, ‘The Landings’
SOLD WITH RAY WHITE
Sale Price: $157,500
Sale Date: 1st August 2024
* IMPORTANT NOTE:
803/8 Ronayne Street, ‘The Landings’
SOLD BY ANOTHER AGENCY
Sale Price: $105,300
Sale Date: 7th August 2024
The unit sold by the other agency included a car park, yet it still sold for $52,200 less than the price Ray White achieved for a property without a car park.
110/8 Ronayne Street, ‘The Landings’
SOLD WITH RAY WHITE
Sale Price: $135,000
Sale Date: 12th September 2024
* IMPORTANT NOTE:
205/8 Ronayne Street, ‘The Landings’
SOLD BY ANOTHER AGENCY
Sale Price: $116,500
Sale Date: 21st August 2024
The unit sold by the other agency included a car park, yet it still sold for $18,500 less than the price Ray White achieved for a property without a car park.
There’s an old saying: “You get what you pay for.”
In these case studies, maybe saving a little on commission upfront led to a significantly higher loss in the end.
List with Ray White for the best results and more money in your pocket. And if fees are a concern for you - let’s talk.
Ray White CRG Auction & Open Home Report
Strong Momentum Across the Group
August delivered a powerful uplift in Open Home activity across Ray White City Realty Group, signalling strong vendor engagement and a renewed wave of buyer momentum. A total of 769 Open Homes were conducted – up 54.2% on July – with 452 properties opened to the market, nearly a 60% increase month-on-month. Buyer engagement was equally impressive, with 504 attendees recorded, a 33.3% rise compared to July. These results reinforce the appetite from purchasers and the effectiveness of our team’s campaigns in driving traffic through properties.
Auctions Leading Buyer Engagement
Auctions were a standout contributor to this surge. Campaigns marketed by Auction accounted for 19% of all Open Homes, representing a 22% lift on July. Buyer attendance through Auctions jumped to 248 buyers, up almost 80%, demonstrating the competitive edge this method of sale brings. Private Treaty campaigns continued to make up the majority of activity ( 81% of Open Homes) and drew in 274 buyers, a solid 31.7% increase month-on-month. This balance highlights the strength of CRG’s dual strategy in capturing both urgency-driven buyers and those taking a more traditional approach.
Market Segment Performance
Apartments and residential properties both recorded strong gains, though with contrasting dynamics. The apartment market saw 529 Open Homes (up 66.3%) and welcomed 239 buyers (up 57.2%). However, average attendance per Open Home dipped slightly to 0.45, reflecting the challenge of scale versus depth in this sector. Meanwhile, the residential market achieved 240 Open Homes (up 33.3%) with 265 buyers (up 17.2%), averaging 1.10 attendees per Open Home despite a slight decline from July. Together, these figures demonstrate resilience across both markets, with high-quality Open Home activity continuing to fuel engagement.
Wider Market Context
New Zealand’s housing market remains in equilibrium after evolving through three distinct phases since the pandemic peak. Following the surge of speculative demand and subsequent post-pandemic correction, the recovery phase began in early 2023. Prices have since stabilised, with the August 2025 median house price at $761,000, sitting comfortably within the $750,000–$800,000 range observed over the past two and a half years.
Listings returned to pandemic peak levels earlier in 2025 and have since plateaued, with the 12-month rolling count steady at 110,000. Sales have also levelled, with 78,000 transactions recorded between August 2024–2025 – the first time in 29 months sales have not increased. This plateau comes despite the Reserve Bank of New Zealand lowering the Official Cash Rate to 3% in August.
Auction Room Highlights & What’s Ahead
Ray White CRG’s September auctions are already showing strong momentum, with multiple bidders registering across every campaign. A standout sale in Coatesville, marketed by Susan Woods-Markwick & Rosa Solano (Sandringham), attracted 13 registered bidders and sold for $2,050,000. At the other end of the market, Dominic Worthington & Ady Huang from Ray White Auckland Central successfully sold a threebedroom student accommodation apartment in Whitaker Place with four registered bidders, achieving 31% above reserve selling at $156,000 + GST.
As we move into the final quarter of 2025, attention now turns to the upcoming CRG Auction Event on the 26th & 27th of November. For vendors looking to secure a sale before Christmas, this event presents the perfect opportunity. Speak with one of our agents across our four offices today to discuss how we can help you achieve a successful result.
Tony Alexander: Cash-strapped Kiwis drop the shop - here’s where they’re making cuts
Things are getting better, but the outlook remains bleak for some sectors.
ANALYSIS: One of the five surveys I run each month asks consumers about their spending plans for the next three to six months. During the depths of the recession last year, a net 42% of people said that they planned to spend less. This reading improved to a net 10% positive just before Christmas as people responded positively to interest rate cuts. However, the cuts haven’t been the economic panacea many were hoping for, and the survey reading fell back to a net 18% planning to spend less in April.
Since then, things have been slowly improving, and the results of my latest survey show that a net 1% of consumers plan to curtail their spending in the months
ahead. That won’t save many in retail who have been holding on for a recovery in consumer spending, but the direction of travel is what really matters, and things are getting better.
We should approach with caution any talk of an economic revival. When we look at individual categories of spending, the outlook is still quite bleak for some sectors. For instance, a net 14% of people say they plan to spend less on furniture and appliances – the market which Smiths City Market and Kitchen Things played in.
A net 16% of people also plan to spend less on eating out. That means hard times continuing for cafes and restaurants, though one’s profitability in this sector
Interest rate cuts haven’t provided the economic revival many were hoping for. Photo / Ted Baghurst
depends strongly on two things. The demographic one serves and one’s ability to control costs. Some operators who mainly service the older age group seem to still be doing quite well.
I ask two questions about housing in my spending surveys. The first is about whether people will spend more or less on a house to live in. This measure was firmly positive from my first survey in June 2020 until February 2022. Since then, it has been in negative territory, with the worst reading being a net 9.8% of people in June last year saying they planned to spend less.
The most recent reading is a net 3.1% planning to spend less, which is still negative and tells us that the market will take time to fire up as we head into spring. But the trend for three months has been towards the positive, which suggests summer will bring some stronger housing market conditions. That is something important for home builders and developers of residential subdivisions.
I also ask people if they plan to buy an investment property. This measure was positive from June 2020 until April 2021 and has been net negative ever since. The worst reading was again in June last year, with a net 18.7% saying no (net selling in other words). The measure has improved over the last three months, but still sits at -9.4%.
Much is being written in newspapers regarding investors doing more buying and I can tell from my other surveys that there definitely are old hands out there buying and newbies making purchases as well. But my survey also captures those who already hold property and the message from this survey as well as the one I run of existing investors with Crockers Property Management is that many probably older investors are looking to sell to help finance their more-expensive-than-expected retirement. That includes money to buy scones and corn fritters in their favoured cafes where they and their friends tend to meet these days.
- Tony Alexander is an independent economics commentator. Additional commentary from him can be found at www.tonyalexander.nz
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Ray White New Zealand celebrates its 2025 award winners
More than 1,300 people gathered for Ray White New Zealand’s annual awards at Spark Arena to celebrate and recognise the top offices and individual achievers from throughout the leading network.
City Realty Group Annual & Quarterly Awards
Our offices came together to celebrate our Quarterly and Annual CRG awards.
Congratulations to all our awarded members – your achievements set the benchmark and continue to inspire performance across our group.
Kelvin Davidson: Whatever happened to New Zealand’s housing shortage crisis?
1. Supply outpacing demand
Last week, Cotality published research looking at how the dwelling stock has changed in various parts of the country relative to population growth in recent years – an insight into physical supply versus demand. It’s not a major surprise to see that supply outpaced demand in Auckland and Wellington in the five years to 2024, which is no doubt part of the reason why property values in those markets have remained so subdued lately. By contrast, despite strong supply increases, Hamilton and Tauranga saw even faster population growth, explaining some of their price resilience.
Elsewhere, other population hotpots such as Waikato District, Selwyn, and Waimakariri have also had strong supply growth to match, meaning property values
and housing affordability have been kept in check to some degree. The outlier is Queenstown, where even though construction activity has been strong enough to match population growth, affordability remains challenging. That just shows yet again the unique nature of that market, with local and imported wealth a key factor.
Overall, when you look at the recent changes in the number of dwellings we have nationally versus our population growth, the strong conclusion is that supply and demand are better balanced than they’ve been for several years. No surprise, then, that shortage is just not a word you hear much anymore. That might not always be the case (although the Government is pushing hard on this front), but it’s a positive thing right now.
Recent mortgage rate cuts have yet to ignite the housing market. Photo / Getty Images
2. Rents remain strikingly weak
On that note, it’s not just house prices that are being dampened by a balanced supply and demand picture at present; rents are too. Taking the median national rent over the three months to July ($593 per week) from MBIE’s bonds system – which is, in effect, for new tenancies – there has been a drop since the same period in 2024 of around $7 (-1.1%).
Now, that’s not a massive decline. But you still have to go back more than 15 yearsaround the GFC - to find the last occasion when rents fell. In other words, it’s pretty unusual for the rental market to favour tenants this much.
3. Less migration has slowed rental demand
Why has rental demand softened? Lower net migration is a big factor, and Stats NZ figures show that net migration in the 12 months to the end of July was around 13,000, significantly below the long-term average of more than 30,000. To be fair, there have been hints in the past few months that migrant departures from NZ have reached a peak and arrivals might just be starting to rise again. In other words, this may be the low point of the cycle. But it’s
early days and these figures can be subject to downward revisions, i.e. caution is still warranted.
4. Is inflation easing?
The first key economic release to watch this week will be Stats NZ’s selected price indexes for August, due Tuesday. It’s a monthly series covering about 45% of the benchmark quarterly CPI, including some key items such as food and rent. The recent upwards trend is something that the Reserve Bank is prepared to regard as temporary – hence the outlook for more OCR cuts to shore up the economy. But we’d all feel happier if Tuesday’s data showed a slowdown in inflation.
5. The last weak GDP reading before an upturn starts?
The second key release is the Q2 GDP data, released by Stats NZ on Thursday. The economy may have shrunk by as much as 0.5% in the three months to June, which would obviously be a disappointing result. But as always, it’s old news, and there’s a sense that Q3 (and beyond) has been better, as the economy slowly starts to respond to lower interest rates.
Cotality chief economist Kelvin Davidson: “There may be some modest increases in property values as we get into 2026.” Photo / Peter Meecham
Cuts Continue, Outlook Still Unclear
On the 20th of August the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) lowered the Official Cash Rate (OCR) to 3%, as widely expected. This follows the Reserve Bank of Australia’s decision to also lower their Official Cash Rate.
Since August 2024, the OCR has been slashed by a total of 250 basis points – from a peak of 5.50% to its current 3% level. The cuts to date have provided much-needed relief to the economy, particularly for borrowers.
The RBNZ has suggested if inflation stays where it is then there is room for further rate cuts. However, if inflation does move upwards, we could see a pause in rate cuts.
Depending on the size of your mortgage & your appetite for risk, it could be worth splitting your mortgage to mitigate future risk as it is a fairly uncertain environment.
For example, a client with a $600,000 mortgage could put $200,000 on a 6 month, $200,000 on a 1 year and $200,000 on a 2-year rate.
As always, if you wish to discuss anything with us, we are just a phone call away.
Rate My Agent Awards
RAY WHITE AUCKLAND CENTRAL ARE PROUD TO BE ACKNOWLEDGED BY RATE MY AGENT FOR THE BELOW AWARDS
CURRENTLY PLACED
#1
Auckland Central
Agency of the Year 2025
#1
Agency of the Year 2025 Grafton
#1
Eden Terrace
Agency of the Year 2025
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Meet the team.
SALES TEAM - AUCKLAND CENTRAL OFFICE
Daniel Horrobin
Pauline Bridgman
Ady Huang
Craig Warburton
Dom Worthington
Dusan Valenta
Habeeb Urrahman
Carlos Del la Varis
Chris Cairns
Grant Elliott
Joon Kim
Wynyard Quarter & Sandringham
Belinda Henson
Casey Chen
Firmin
Dayal
Judi Yurak
Anchit Sharma
Erin Dayal
Leo Zhu
Krister Samuel
SALES TEAM - WYNYARD QUARTER OFFICE
OUR LOANMARKET MORTGAGE ADVISOR
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LoanMarket Mortgage Adviser
Ryan Bridgman Sam Huang
Steve King Steve Kirk
Jamie Maclennan
Luke Crockford
Ella Ross
Andrew Bond
Ainsley Lewis
Tony Warren
Renuka Bisht
Neil Dayal
Ash Patel
Michelle Yurak
Gabriela Galateanu
Jayde Ryan
