New Zealand struggles to regain economic mojo

Stella Qiu, Reuters

For decades, New Zealand has relied on inflating the housing market to engineer a recovery during downturns, but the playbook has failed this time, putting policymakers in a quandary just as the Middle East war adds a new layer of uncertainty. Even after the Reserve Bank of New Zealand aggressively slashed the benchmark interest rate from 5.5% to 2.25%, house prices still languish some 20% below their pandemic peak, dismantling the wealth effect that long anchored the economy. The war compounds the problem, with oil price inflation pushing up borrowing costs ⁠globally, potentially forcing the RBNZ into a more hawkish stance even with the economy in the worst shape since the global financial crisis. New Zealand's borrowers are already being squeezed by higher market interest rates and anaemic demand, making any recovery in the housing market — once one of the world's most expensive — elusive, said Nick Goodall, head of research at Cotality NZ.

"It's sort of been thrown into question now with all the global uncertainty," Goodall said, noting he had previously expected some pick-up in the housing market this year as prices, mortgage rates and salaries found an equilibrium.

"The longer the war drags on, the worse it will get." The RBNZ already forecasts no ⁠rise in house prices this year. New Zealand's two-year swap rate, the benchmark for housing loans in the mortgage-heavy nation, jumped close to 0.6 percentage point this month, tracking the broader rise in global rates. At the same time, economic growth cooled in the fourth quarter, data showed last week, with construction slumping and consumer spending weak, even before the massive distruptions created by the war. The unemployment rate stands at a decade-high of 5.4%.

The speed and scale of the central bank's post-pandemic tightening cycle bears part of the blame for the breakdown in the relationship between rates and housing, with property prices tanking, debt-servicing costs vaulting and the economy ultimately slipping into recession. Government efforts to stoke growth have been lacklustre, even with an election looming on November 7 that is sure to be dominated by voter dissatisfaction over the economy. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has offered little aimed at reviving the labour market, which is still reeling from waves of public sector layoffs last year.

Real estate projects have frozen, with the market hobbled by a glut of supply and few buyers. In Auckland, a 56-storey residential tower called Seascape —meant to be New Zealand's tallest ⁠building — may never be completed with developer Shundi Customs placed in receivership this month. At an apartment project in Wellington named One Tasman, which was launched in 2021 and due to be completed in early 2025, the existing building on the site had been cordoned off but had yet to be demolished when Reuters visited last month.

Repeated calls to developer Willis Bond's office did not go through, while intereview requests to company executives on LinkedIn were ignored. "Launching in 2021 when the market was as hot as it could be, it's a challenge for any developer to bring something to the market ... because the market turned very shortly after 2021," said Tamba Carleton, director of residential research at CBRE. "Quite a few other projects were in that situation, where they just had to go back to the drawing board until market cycle timing was more supportive."

New Zealand's housing malaise has been exacerbated by a wave of affluent New Zealanders opting to leave the country for better economic conditions elsewhere. Statistics New Zealand estimated ⁠the country lost 40,000 citizens last year alone, with more than 60% of them moving to Australia, building on two years of similar outflows. Former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern's recent move to Sydney has become a symbol of the problem. "Because thousands of Wellingtonians have left the area, the supply-and-demand seesaw has completely changed," said Brian Ellis, a 59-year-old retiree, who recently sold his inner city apartment for a price ⁠well below his expectations. "It's literally made a half-million-dollar difference to how much money I'm going to have to enjoy my retirement." Meanwhile, former project manager David Laing said he had considered a move to Australia but ultimately decided against it because his wife has stable employment in Wellington.

Since being laid off 18 months ago, Laing says he has received only a handful of interviews from hundreds of job applications. "We've cut anything that's not non-discretionary out ⁠of our budget," he said. "From a financial perspective, it definitely feels like the household is going backwards."