House asking prices up and rents (mostly) down

Tuesday, 9 September 2025

For the first time in a year, the asking price of homes has gone up.

It’s a small bit of good news in a property market suffering from late-winter blues.

Trade Me’s latest Property Pulse Report showed the national average asking price for a property has shown positive movement for the first time since June 2025.

In August, the average asking price was $820,800, which is up 0.5% year on year.

Trade Me Property customer director Gavin Lloyd said the increase, while modest, wasn't something to be sniffed at, particularly at the end of the winter season.

“If we look at the market this time last year, prices were down 2.3% year on year, so to show forward momentum ahead of spring suggests building confidence both from buyers and sellers,” he said.

Auckland's average asking price dropped to $984,600 in August, down more than $14,000 or 1.4% from July and down 1.1% year on year. The fall marks the second consecutive month of house prices in the super city sitting below the million-dollar mark.

Lloyd said diving deeper there were a couple of stand-outs at opposite ends of the spectrum, illustrating the diversity of the housing market in New Zealand’s biggest city.

“If we take Waiheke Island as an example, it’s seen a couple of months of fairly significant year-on-year falls, with the average asking price down 14.8% in August, which followed a decline of more than 20% in July.

Papakura was the only Auckland area to show positive momentum in August, with the average asking price up 3.1% year on year to $802,900 which marked the fourth consecutive month of increases for the suburb.

Wellington’s asking price is down 2.6% but Waikato and Christchurch were up by 1.7% and 3.1% respectively.

But the true performers were in regions. Gisborne recorded a 10% increase in August after a nearly 6% increase in July, with the average asking price at $679,600.

Southland also had a strong performance with year-on-year growth of 6.7% in August, coming off an increase of 4.4% in July.

Lloyd said with an average asking price of $537,150, Southland remained one of the country’s more affordable regions.

The West Coast too had shown two months of consecutive increases in both July and August 2024. In August, the average asking price rose close to 16% to $467,650, the increase following 8% in July.

He said all three areas had shown strong resilience despite the cool property market.

Lloyd said supply of properties had fallen compared with July - down 4%.

Figures from Realestate.co.nz showed that national rental markets were also cooling - the average rental price dropped to $628, the lowest in two years.

And just like the housing prices, rents were highest in Southland with an all-time high average rental price of $509 per week. The West Coast bucked the national trend with an 11.2% average rental price increase.

All of the major urban centres recorded a decline in average rental prices when compared with 12 months ago. Wellington experienced the largest year-on-year decline, down 11.8%, followed by Otago, down 3.9%, Auckland down 2.3%, Canterbury down 2.1%, and Waikato down 0.6%.

Realestate.co.nz’s Sarah Wood said the drops might reflect increased rental supply in the cities or tenants negotiating more favourable lease terms, but it was also likely linked to affordability pressures amid broader economic challenges.

Nationally, new rental listings rose 16.0% year on year, reaching 6700 in August 2025 compared with 5775 a year earlier.

Wellington led the charge with a 105.8% increase, more than doubling the number of rental properties newly listed in the capital – from 274 listings in August 2024 to 564 in August 2025.

Wood said in addition to Wellington, three other regions showed increases: Wairarapa was up 97.1%, Gisborne was up 82.4% and Hawke’s Bay rose 69.2%.