Down 26% y/y.
Comments from Stats NZ:
- “April 2023 marks the third consecutive month that the number of homes consented has been down by more than 25 percent when compared with the same month of the previous year,” construction and property statistics manager Michael Heslop said. “The trend for the number of new homes consented peaked in early 2022 and has been decreasing since then.”
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand rate hike cycle has had an outsized impact on the heavily indebted NZ property sector.
Graph via the RBNZ. As the headline notes its only updated at the end of the month. The current OCR is higher than that shown, at 5.5% after last week’s rate hike.