New Zealand Consented 41,268 New Homes in a Year as Townhouses Closed In on Stand-Alone Houses

New Zealand consented 41,268 new homes in the year to August 2026, up 21%, a third straight month above 40,000, while our own price reading stayed flat.

New Zealand consented 41,268 new homes in the year ended August 2026, up 21% on the previous twelve months, Statistics New Zealand reported on 1 October. In the month of August alone, 3,440 new dwellings were consented, 12% more than in August 2025. On a seasonally adjusted basis the monthly count rose 5.6% in August after falling 4.5% in July.

Michelle Feyen, economic indicators spokesperson at the statistics agency, said this is the third consecutive month in which the annual number of new homes consented has exceeded 40,000, returning to levels last seen in 2023.

The country is building a different kind of home

The annual breakdown is where the change shows. Stand-alone houses accounted for 19,096 consents, up 21%. Townhouses, flats and units accounted for 18,085, up 25%. Apartments came to 2,381, down 4%, and retirement village units to 1,706, up 27%.

The monthly figures run the same way. In August, stand-alone houses took 1,704 consents, up 14%, townhouses, flats and units 1,455, up 21%, retirement village units 153, up 15%, and apartments 128, down 50%. Auckland led the annual regional count with 17,264 consents, up 19%, and Canterbury followed with 8,933, up 35%.

Two things are happening at once. The attached-housing category is growing faster than the detached one and is now close behind it on volume, while the apartment category is going the other way in both the year and the month.

Why this release is also the reason we publish no New Zealand price per square metre

Glopra does not carry a price per square metre for New Zealand, and this release is the clearest illustration of why. No publisher issues a per-square-metre residential price for the country. The obvious workaround, dividing a price per dwelling by an average floor area, fails because every New Zealand floor-area figure traces back to building consents, which means new dwellings only. The agency's own housing report gives an average new-dwelling floor area of 139.7 square metres for the year ended January 2024, made up of 183.2 square metres for stand-alone houses and 106.7 square metres for townhouses, flats, units and other attached forms.

Set that against today's numbers. The category growing fastest, at 25%, is the smaller of the two, and the larger category is growing more slowly, at 21%. A per-square-metre figure built on a consent-based floor area would therefore drift over time for reasons that have nothing to do with what a buyer pays, and it would describe new homes rather than the standing stock that most purchases come from. We keep the field empty and say why, rather than publish a number that moves with the construction mix.

Supply is rising into a flat price market that foreigners mostly cannot enter

Our New Zealand row carries a national average asking price of 504,654 US dollars per dwelling and an average asking rent of 1,619.42 US dollars per month, both taken from the same national portal for July 2026. The annual price change is minus 0.4% in local currency and minus 3.2% in US dollars. The bubble risk score is 50, in the moderate band. Round-trip transaction costs are 5.5%.

That combination is unusual. Consents are running at a three-year high and the annual price reading is slightly negative, which means the building response is arriving into demand that is not currently bidding prices up. For an international reader the constraint is sharper still: foreign purchase of residential property in New Zealand is banned, with narrow exemptions, so the consent boom is a domestic story that most non-resident buyers cannot participate in at all.

For those who can, rental income is taxed on a progressive scale with no tax-free band, starting at 10.5% and reaching the 30% bracket at 53,500 New Zealand dollars of income, with no flat expense allowance; non-residents file on the same scale. This is information rather than advice, and the ownership restriction above applies first.

Sources: Statistics New Zealand, Building consents issued August 2026, 1 October 2026 https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/building-consents-issued-august-2026/; Statistics New Zealand release republished by LiveNews, 1 October 2026 https://livenews.co.nz/2026/10/01/annual-number-of-new-home-consents-continues-to-increase-building-consents-issued-august-2026-stats-nz-news-story-and-information-release/; Statistics New Zealand release republished by Mirage News, 1 October 2026 https://www.miragenews.com/new-home-consents-continue-to-rise-annually-1753089/

Market data: New Zealand