Policy Briefing: Hot Property in New Zealand: Housing bubbles in the metropolitan centres

Housing has become prohibitively expensive in many regions of New Zealand, putting home ownership beyond the reach of a growing number of New Zealand households, particularly those without wider sources of family financial support. When measured relative to household income, house prices in Auckland are among the most expensive in the world, and now exceed those of London and San Francisco. The expensive nature of New Zealand real estate is due, at least in part, to the sustained market exuberance that has produced a broad-based bubble in house prices.