1. Women still trail men in rental property ownership stakes
CoreLogic Women and Property Report was published last week and showed that the investment property gap for men and women shows no signs of closing, with around 26% of rentals owned exclusively by males, above the female figure of 22% (the other 52% is in mixed gender ownership). This year’s report also included some detailed survey-based results, which showed that these differences are not due to attitudes or a lack of interest – indeed, just as many women as men rate property ownership to be very important.
Instead, the gap appears to be due to lesser financial resources and also perhaps a lower level of understanding about the property buying process amongst females. There are key policy issues to look at here, mostly around fixing the gender pay gap which would allow more females to enter property ownership, but also possible ways to encourage a higher share of females into finance-based education, perhaps accounting or economics at school or university.
The report found women’s property ownership is higher in more affordable areas, such as Kawerau, where 27.6% of properties are owned solely by women, Whanganui at 26.9%, Invercargill at 25.8%, South Waikato at 25.7% and Auckland City at 25.6%.
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While Auckland City is not an affordable market, the data suggests that women’s ownership rates there highlight a difference for more attainable apartments.
Meanwhile, female-only ownership is lowest in high-demand investment hubs, including Mackenzie at 14.3%, Queenstown at 16.2%, and Thames-Coromandel at 16.3%.
2. The better economic news keeps coming
Meanwhile, focusing on the here and now, the so-called green shoots continue to appear in the economy, with the NZ Activity Index showing a 1.4% rise in the year to January. To be fair, that’s not an absolutely booming result, but it was nevertheless the strongest increase for nine months, and chimes with other (slowly) improving trends in sectors such as manufacturing, services and retail.
The economy might be a slow ship to turn, but at least there are now signs that lower interest rates are finally having the expected effect. Better economic news would also tend to limit any further rise in the unemployment rate and also suggests that the housing market could slowly start to rise in the coming months too. It’ll be interesting to see if the CoreLogic Home Value Index for February (due out this week) will show the first signs of national growth in values after 2024’s falls.
CoreLogic chief economist Kelvin Davidson: "The economy might be a slow ship to turn, but at least there are now signs that lower interest rates are finally having the expected effect." Photo / Peter Meecham
3. Other signs of life
Backing up the better news from the NZAC, we also got steady results last week from ANZ with their business and consumer confidence surveys (albeit with some small hints of cost/price concerns from businesses), and Stats NZ reported that filled jobs rose by 0.3% in January, the second increase in the past three months. All in all, the economy does seem to be finally perking up a bit.
4. The banks are busy, busy, busy
The Reserve Bank reported $5.1 billion of new mortgage lending activity in January, up by a very solid $1.7bn from the same month in 2024, with most types of lending looking stronger – e.g. whether you look at house purchases/bank switches/top-ups, or by owner-occupier/investor, or LVR. The breakdown I’m probably focused on most at the moment is the split by debt-to-income ratio, and this is showing hints of a rise – although it’s nothing major yet, given that the internal serviceability test rates at the banks are doing the work of capping maximum loan sizes anyway.
5. There’s less risk of housing shortages than in the past
Stats NZ’s data on new dwellings consented for January will be out on Tuesday this week, and it looks likely to re-confirm that the long downturn has come to end. Granted, it might be a while until we see a new upturn for consents and actual construction workloads. But the key point is that the floor for activity in this sector has come at a much higher level than in the past, suggesting less risk than before of housing shortages re-emerging.
- Kelvin Davidson is chief economist at property insights firm CoreLogic
