NZ’s home ownership figure improves, but it’s still not a patch on Kazakhstan
Sunday, 26 April 2026
Former communist countries are smoking New Zealand when it comes to home ownership rates - even though the Kiwi level of home ownership has improved in recent years.
About two thirds (66%) of New Zealanders owned their own home at the time of the latest census in 2023, according to Stats NZ.
That’s an increase from the 64.5% recorded in the 2018 census, which was the lowest rate since 1951, when just 61.5% of households owned their homes.
But it remains well down from a peak rate of 73.8% in the 1990s, and it’s even further off the level of home ownership boasted by other countries in recent global comparisons.
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So what countries have the highest rate of home ownership?
The 10 countries with the highest rate of home ownership are all post-communist or communist countries, according to the World Population Review.
The World Population Review is an independent, online data platform that provides real-time demographic statistics for countries worldwide.
It puts Kazakhstan, a former Soviet state, number one in the global home ownership rankings with a rate of 98% based on 2024 data.
China and Laos, both communist countries, follow in second and third place with ownership rates of 96% and 95.9% respectively.
Coming in at fourth and fifth are Romania and Albania, both former communist nations, with rates of 95.6% and 95.3%.
Rounding out the top 10 are Slovakia, formerly half of communist Czechoslovakia, Russia, and Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, three of the states that made up the socialist republic of Yugoslavia.
They all have rates above 91%.
Why are home ownership levels so high in these countries?
Well, the World Population Review lays out a few factors that have been significant drivers for home ownership across most of these countries.
One is the large-scale privatisation of state-owned housing after the fall of communism which transferred millions of homes, often apartments, into private hands.
Another is a strong cultural preference for owning a family home rather than renting, which means homes are often passed down through generations or self-built rather than purchased through modern mortgage markets.
However, China’s high rate reflects decades of housing reform, rapid urban apartment ownership, and strong social and financial incentives that favour owning over long-term renting, the World Population Review says.
Ray White senior data analyst Atom Go Tian recently looked at home ownership rates in OECD countries as part of an analysis of home ownership in New Zealand.
In his analysis, the countries with the highest ownership rates were Romania (92.8%) and Croatia (90.4%).
Those rates were achieved through the mass transfer of state housing stock to tenants in the early 1990s, a policy path with its own structural limitations, he says.
Where does New Zealand’s rate sit compared to similar countries?
As of early 2026, the average home ownership rate across OECD countries was about 71%, and Go Tian says that placed against OECD peers New Zealand's 66% sits in the middle of the pack.
Countries like Germany and Switzerland have low ownership rates - of 41% and 38.2% respectively - but well-developed rental markets and strong tenant protections, he says.
“They represent a different model entirely rather than a failure of aspiration.”
New Zealand's moderate ownership, a private rental sector that expanded largely by default, and limited social housing is most similar to Australia (62.7%), Canada (68.6%), and the United Kingdom (68.4%), he says.
“The common thread in those countries is that ownership has become harder to access earlier in life, and the gap between those who do and don't own has widened along income and age lines.”
In Go Tian’s analysis, the countries with lower home ownership rates than New Zealand were Australia, the United States (65.3%), the Netherlands (57.9%) and Denmark (52.2%).
If New Zealand’s home ownership rate is improving, that’s good news - right?
When the Stats NZ data was released, principal analyst Rosemary Goodyear said the increase in home ownership, although small, was a reversal of the falling rates seen since home ownership peaked in the early 1990s.
Go Tian says that on the surface that is encouraging news, but his analysis shows the national improvement was driven largely by the oldest cohorts rather than a broad-based increase in access for working-age New Zealanders.
And on a regional basis ownership rose everywhere except in Auckland, which had a rate of 59.5%, and growth of 0.1% between 2018 and 2023, he says.
“So while home ownership is rising, it is not in the form prior generations would recognise. It is arriving later in life, and increasingly outside the major cities.
“Neither of those shifts shows up in the headline rate, but both help explain why a number pointing upward can still feel, for many New Zealanders in their 30s and 40s, like a destination that keeps moving.”
But New Zealand’s position in the OECD comparison also suggested the pattern of ownership arriving later in life is not a uniquely New Zealand problem, he says.