Population, wage and housing trends reveal a changing New Zealand
Friday, 19 June 2026
Kiwis are increasingly choosing places to live, work and invest where lifestyle and opportunity overlap.
We are leaving our big North Island cities for jobs, wages, housing supply and business growth which increasingly point in the same direction - south.
Since Covid there has been more of a concentration on how we live. If you have to be locked down - better it be with a backyard and natural bush to walk in, right?
Canterbury and Southland in particular have benefited from the different way we think about where we live. The possibility of remote work and a drive to enhance our lifestyles has been part of it.
Read more:
It’s still not cheap, but housing affordability in Auckland has improved
Housing market idling and showing no signs of coming off the line
An LJ Hooker survey showed no matter where we are, we want safe neighbourhoods, access to amenities and quiet. And we really want backyards. Two thirds of respondents said they would not consider a home without one.
Lighthouse Financial’s managing director Matthew Harris said people naturally follow opportunity and money.
Where the money is
Here’s the leaderboard. Wellington pulls in the biggest weekly pay - an average of $1910 a week. You pay the most rent in Auckland and the Bay of Plenty with $660 and $670 a week respectively.
To buy a home, Auckland remained the most expensive market in the country with a median sale price of $1,005,000.
Canterbury is officially the fastest-growing region in the country - expanding its population by 1.1% a year. It’s complemented by the highest number of residential building consents, a massive 12.0% new dwellings per 1,000 residents.
It also has room for new development that is lacking in places like Wellington and its average rental price is well down at $580 a week.
The bottom of the south also has Otago with a 2.1% increase in active operating businesses.
And Bay of Plenty has the toughest labour market with unemployment at 7.1% - followed by Auckland on 6.6%.
At the other end the lowest average weekly rent is in Southland with $495 a week and the West Coast had the lowest entry point into the property market with the median house sale price at just $435,000. But it also has the lowest pay-cheques with workers averaging $1489 a week.
The lowest population growth is in Nelson, Marlborough, Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay.
Otago has the lowest unemployment rate in the country of just 3.6% while Wellington has the lowest annual business growth with -2.2%.
Where are the jobs?
Figures aren’t everything, but they’re a factor - if you can get a job down south and you can’t in Auckland, most people’s decisions become clearer.
Harris said Christchurch - and Canterbury - stood out now.
“We’ve had a lot of investors heading to Christchurch - they are looking at things like potential yield and cash flow.”
Rent returns were huge and as people relocated that supported that investment, he said.
Hawke’s Bay and the East Coast were not hot right now, nor Nelson/Marlborough, but there was investor interest in Tauranga and Rotorua, Harris said.
Looking at the data, Wellington should be winning. If wages alone determined where New Zealanders lived, Wellington would be booming. It has the highest average pay packets in the country and renters devote a smaller share of their income to housing than almost anywhere else. House values have declined and first home buyers have recently held about a third of the market share.
Yet population growth has stalled, unemployment has climbed and business numbers are shrinking.
So if Wellington represents uncertainty, Canterbury increasingly represents stability. Fastest population growth, a massive building programme, business growth and lower unemployment with house prices still well below Auckland’s million dollar club and even $50,000 below Wellington’s average.
Harris said billions had been poured into the Canterbury region both in public and private dollars and it showed in significant amounts of infrastructure and buildings.
The five regions with the highest number of new homes consented in the year ending April 2026 had Canterbury up a whopping 29%, Auckland up 21%, then a big drop to Wellington up 13%, then Waikato up 6.3%, and Otago up 3.2%.
Auckland does consent more houses overall - but as Stats NZ says Canterbury and Otago have the highest number of homes consented relative to population size.
It’s also about what we are building - Stats NZ’s April figures show townhouses, flats and units are up 18%, apartments up 27% and retirement village units up 13%.
But it’s not just Christchurch down south making strides. Otago has the country's lowest unemployment rate at 3.6%. Southland offers some of the cheapest rents and house prices in New Zealand while still delivering wages close to the national average.
Recent job advertising data shows some of the strongest growth in vacancies occurring in Canterbury, Southland and the West Coast.
New advertised salary data from Seek NZ showed Canterbury leading the nation, with annual advertised pay increases of 4.4%, double the pace recorded in Auckland and Wellington.
Seek NZ country manager Rob Clark said the quarterly advertised salary growth eased a little in May but annual growth edged higher and was now running at the fastest pace since late 2024.
“Canterbury remains the clear regional stand-out, with the strongest quarterly and annual growth. The rest of the north and the rest of the south also posted solid gains while Auckland and Wellington continued to lag.”
Where is the buzz?
Meanwhile, Queenstown is also hot. Harris said there were developments all over and the place seemed to be buzzing.
The story of the regions is not universal, though. In places such as Gisborne and Bay of Plenty, rents have risen far faster than local incomes. Renters in both regions spend more than 40% of their earnings on housing, among the highest levels in the country.
While Canterbury, Otago and Southland are emerging as the country’s growth leaders, a middle tier of regions is quietly ticking along. Nelson, Marlborough and Hawke’s Bay recorded little or no population growth over the past year, but remain attractive lifestyle destinations, without the combination of housing growth, labour market strength and business expansion currently drawing people further south.
David Reid Homes is among the companies following the trend to the regions. Chief executive Ben Allan said the company had invested $10.3 million into new show homes around New Zealand - many of them in the smaller centres.
Quotable Value’s Simon Peterson said residential property values continued to hold steady for the most part across the country with a steady supply of houses for sale and enough buyers to meet the market, but not nearly enough competition to drive prices upward in any major way.
“But we are still seeing stronger momentum in parts of the South Island – especially in and around Invercargill and Southland in general, where relative affordability and a strong local economy are helping to underpin demand.”
Harris also expected there to be a cyclical element to it.
“When the economy swings back - and it will happen - I would expect Auckland to return to popularity.”
Sources: Trade Me Property Rental Price Index, Real Estate Institute of New Zealand Monthly Property Report, Stats NZ.