For four in 10, the ‘New Zealand Dream’ is out of reach

Sunday, 10 May 2026

The “New Zealand Dream” is unattainable according to four in 10 people, and another four in 10 believe it is only “somewhat” attainable, a survey paid for by insurer OneChoice indicates.

The OneChoice nationally representative survey centred on 506 younger adults aged 18 to 39, the age cohort which was actively in the phase of their life when they were seeking to claim their share of the New Zealand Dream.

That dream is one of property ownership, providing a stable base in which to raise a family.

However, just 21% felt the New Zealand Dream was “to a great extent” attainable, while 38% felt it was “somewhat” attainable, and 42% did not feel it was attainable. Of those aspiring to buy a home one day, 46% told researchers they felt a sense of hopelessness.

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In fact, the Kiwi Dream for many had become “owning any kind of home” rather than a standalone home with a garden; a concept captured by the idea of a free-standing home on a quarter-acre section.

And what’s worse is that most New Zealanders have no trust that things will ever improve, the survey showed.

When asked whether “living affordability” would change in the next 10 years, a pervading sense of pessimism was evident. Only 12% felt it would get better, while become “more affordable”, while 67% of people felt it would become less affordable.

The survey was conducted by market research company MYMAVINS in late December. That is before US President Donald Trump’s attack on Iran, so sentiment may even have worsened as the cost of living spikes.

Renting was seen as a “trap” by most young renters, half of whom said rents had increased faster than their income. Many thought they were 10 years or more away from buying a place of their own.

Some said they were doing things like delaying having children, or were considering moving to another city in a bid to save enough to buy a home.

Social cohesion has been a growing focus for researchers, with people’s personal finances being the biggest predictor of whether they felt they have a stake in society.

In Mid-April, a report from the Helen Clark Foundation claimed people’s sense of social cohesion and trust in government had slipped on almost every score since a year ago.

The author of the report from the foundation, Shamubeel Eaqub, said: “The biggest predictor for people's sense of belonging, their isolation, loneliness, or their trust in each other, trust in community, goes back to that one indicator around ‘are you financially stressed?’”

Some businesses have responded to help their younger employees achieve the Kiwi Dream. Kiwibank chief executive Steve Yurkovich said the bank had opened an office in Christchurch because so many young workers wanted to get out of Auckland so they could buy homes.

The other group who have responded to affordability pressure are parents, but the research gave an indication that while 42% had expectations of a contribution to their deposit from their parents, the same percentage had no expectations at all.

High prices appeared to have produced a moment when property ownership had become a heritable privilege in which being born to relatively wealthy parents was important for whether and when young people could afford to buy a home.

Developer and affordable housing specialist Sandy Foster from Aegis Projects has seen the importance to families of home ownership.

Auckland-based Foster chairs the Housing Foundation, which exists to help lower income families make the leap into home ownership through a shared ownership model.

Later this year, the foundation would be publishing a longitudinal study of the impacts on families of moving from insecure renting to ownership.

“We instinctively think home ownership's a good thing and it's going to be beneficial, but when you see it demonstrated in the statistics, and in the data, and in the feedback from people, it's fantastic,” Foster said.

Positive impacts include better educational attainments by children, cost-savings from not having to frequently move, and greater connection to community.

“It's really uplifting to see that. We just wish we could do more of it because there's such a need,” Foster said.

But, he lamented: “There aren’t that many of us in the space.”

He noted the first signs of European-style long-term tenancies with the opening last week of a Simplicity Living apartment complex in Auckland, owned by a KiwiSaver scheme, with ten-year leases for tenants.

He said the survey indicated that younger New Zealanders had been influenced by the idea promoted first by American self-help authors and podcasters that financial independence was the real dream, and that could be secured without ever owning a home, through investing.

The research by OneChoice, which sells life insurance, indicated aspiring home buyers felt there were other challenges to the New Zealand dream than the affordability of homes.

Not least that aspiring home buyers lacked trust in the quality of new builds: 64% felt new-build homes carried a high risk of defects, 72% were worried new-build homes were being constructed too quickly and quality was being compromised, and 67% felt it had become harder to trust that new-build homes would be compliant and safe.

Ed McKnight, resident economist from Opes Partners, which helps smaller investors buyproperties, had seen nothing to suggest those fears were justified, and in his opinion, it was older buildings that often came with more uncertainty.

“My first thought is those numbers seem really high,” he said.

He asked whether people answering the survey had a baseline to understand whether it was getting “harder” to trust new-builds.

McKnight said: “We’ve just been through a bit of a construction boom, so it wouldn’t surprise me that some people were like we’re questioning are their corners being cut?”

But he would have expected a far lower proportion of people with trust issues than the survey suggested.

And, there had been media coverage of how many Auckland new-builds had failed their final council inspection, with some people posting questions about whether Auckland was facing a repeat of the leaky building scandal, which devastated many buyers’ finances.

That involved timber-framed homes built between 1988 and 2004, but the term also came to also be associated with faulty apartment buildings, which left the owners facing enormous bills to fix.

McKnight pointed out that the inspection fail rate in Auckland had been falling in recent years, and that inspection failures often identified things that were fixable, which were then fixed.

Construction industry expert John Tookey from Auckland University of Technology also felt aspiring home buyers were excessively concerned, if the data was truly reflective of sentiment.

But there was something New Zealand should be concerned about. The wars raging in the Middle East and Ukraine would suck up a lot of building materials like steel, and building materials-makers were very heavy users of fossil fuels in their production.

Tookey expected that to cause a demand spike, which would lead to construction material prices to rise sharply.

Foster also felt that first home buyers did not need to be overly fearful of quality issues.

“My personal view is that that is not as big an issue as as people might think,” he said.

But there was another barrier to ownership that he suspected was at play: the fear of buying in what could turn out to be a falling market.

Just over four in 10 aspiring buyers identified “uncertainty” as something that was holding them back.

House prices are down significantly from their 2021 peaks driven by ultra-low interest rates designed to shore up the economy during the global Covid pandemic, and ANZ, BNZ and Westpac are expecting prices to remain stable this year, and only rising slightly next year.

However, all recognised there were worse scenarios for home-owners.

“There's quite a lot of stock on the market, but people are reluctant to to enter into home ownership,” Foster said.

“When the market is down, people are nervous. When the market is up, everyone wants to get into it,” he said.