An overview of the Auckland economy for August 2026, in charts and graphs and with some commentary.

Measures covered are: house prices and numbers sold, weekly rents, building consents, employment and unemployment, GDP, business and consumer confidence, retail sales, imports.

Highlights include:

• business confidence for the June 2026 quarter showed a net 5% of businesses expecting the general business situation to improve over the next three months: another fall; lowest since 2024; above 2018 to 2023; below most of 2009 to 2017;
• median house price for the month of June 2026 was $980,000 (in real* dollars: 4% below last month; 5% below a year ago; slight downtrend since November 2023; 39% below the 2021 peak; 15% below ten years ago);
• number of houses sold for the year ended June 2026 was 23,973: same as May; flat since June 2025; rising 31% since the May 2023 trough; 34% below the 2021 peak; above mid-2017 to mid-2020;
• average weekly rent for the month of May 2026 was $684 (in real* dollars: rising since February, after trending down since mid-2024; same now as eleven years ago). For the rest of New Zealand, the figure was $584: similar to April 2026 (but highly seasonal); 1% below a year ago; trending down since 2024; the lowest May rent since 2020;
• number of new dwellings consented in the year ended June 2026 was 17,097: 1% above May, and rising strongly by 20% in a year; 22% below the September 2022 peak; 13% above 2019’s pre-Covid-boom level;
• real* value of new non-residential buildings consented in the year ended June 2026 was $2,510 million: 1% above May; 18% above August 2025’s trough; 5% above a year ago; 28% below 2022 and 2019 peaks; 9% above the 2020 trough before the Covid boom;
• real* value of imports by Auckland seaports for the year ended June 2026 was $34.2 billion: slowly rising 9% since October 2024, still 3% below April 2023, but 24% higher than the 2020 Covid trough. For the rest of New Zealand, the figure was $35.3 billion: up 6% in two months (partly due to rising fuel prices?), but 19% below their 2023 post-Covid rebound peak. Auckland has mostly been half the New Zealand total since 2018; previously it was mostly more than half.

*Note: real dollars/values are after adjusting for the effects of inflation each quarter, so a similar ‘real’ level means that a value rose at a similar rate to inflation.

August 2026

Previous updates. 

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

2025

November

December