It’s still not cheap, but housing affordability in Auckland has improved
Monday, 15 June 2026
Kiwis chasing the dream of more affordable house prices across the ditch should think again, with Auckland now more affordable than any of Australia’s five biggest cities.
That’s according to the Demographia international housing affordability report, which just five years ago had Auckland as the fourth least affordable market in its rankings.
Now, it’s ranked 15th least affordable - and that makes it a more affordable city to buy a home in than Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, or Perth which are ranked second, fourth, eighth, ninth, and 13th least affordable respectively.
Each year the Demographia report assesses affordability using the 'median multiple', a measure of median house price divided by median household income.
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It then ranks 96 major housing markets, with populations of more than one million in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, UK and the United States.
Auckland’s median price was just over $1 million in May, the latest Real Estate Institute figures show, and this year the report put its 'median multiple' at 7.7, which meant house prices were 7.7 times the median household income.
That does not mean Auckland housing is now affordable. Far from it.
Auckland remains “severely unaffordable”, as markets with house prices more than three times the median regional income are defined as unaffordable by the report authors.
But it is still a significant improvement from 2022 when Auckland’s “median multiple” was 11.2.
And the report authors singled out the New Zealand government’s “Going for Housing Growth” policy as the most hopeful development in housing affordability in recent years.
The underlying premise of the policy was that housing affordability had deteriorated because land supply had been artificially restricted, a pattern that had occurred across most developed countries, they said.
“New Zealand’s reforms attempt to address this directly by requiring local governments to maintain competitive land markets.”
The Demographia ranking comes not long after Cotality’s latest housing affordability report which revealed there had been a “significant” shift in housing affordability around the country.
It put the national median house price to income ratio in the three months to December at 7.2, and said the Auckland and Wellington markets had seen the biggest improvement, and now had ratios of 7.5 and 6.4.
At the time, Cotality chief property economist Kelvin Davidson said the recent under-performance of house prices in Auckland and Wellington had played an important role in restoring affordability in those markets.
During the Covid-era housing market boom Auckland and Wellington’s house prices skyrocketed, but in the downturn that followed both markets saw significant house price falls.
In the case of Auckland, Cotality’s latest data puts the region’s median price at $1.04 million in May, 23% below the market peak in early 2022.
While activity in New Zealand’s market has improved from the trough it hit in 2023, it remains subdued and house prices have largely flat-lined over the last year.
The latest Real Estate Institute data had the national median price and Auckland’s median price rising annually by 1.3% and 2.6%, but sales nationally and in Auckland were down annually.
Infometrics chief forecaster Gareth Kieran said with sales activity weakening and an increasing number of properties to choose from, prices looked likely to come under renewed downward pressure throughout the rest of 2026.
Meanwhile, in the Demographia rankings Hong Kong retained its long-time position as the most unaffordable market with a median multiple of 14.1.
Sydney, San Jose in California, Adelaide and Vancouver rounded out the top five most unaffordable markets with median multiples of 14.0, 11.3, 11.2 and 10.8 respectively.
The three most affordable markets were in Cleveland and Pittsburgh in the United States, and Edmonton in Canada with median multiples of 3.1, 3.2 and 3.6.