An overview of the Auckland economy for July 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:

• consumer confidence index for the June 2026 quarter was 83.8: continuing last quarter’s fall; one of the lowest ever; fluctuating wildly since 2023;
• median house price for the month of May 2026 was $1,005,000 (in real* dollars: 1% below last month; same as a year ago; slight downtrend the last three years; 36% below the 2021 peak; similar to eleven years ago);
• number of houses sold for the year ended May 2026 was 23,899: 1% fall in a month; flat since June 2025; rising 30% since the May 2023 trough; 34% below the 2021 peak; above mid-2017 to mid-2020;
• average weekly rent for the month of April 2026 was $675 (in real* dollars: a small uptick since February, after trending down since mid-2024; same now as eleven years ago). For the rest of New Zealand, the figure was $581: 1% lower than March 2026 (but highly seasonal); 2% below a year ago; falling since 2024; the lowest April rent in six years;
• number of new dwellings consented in the year ended May 2026 was 16,862: 1% above April, and rising strongly by 22% in a year; 23% below the September 2022 peak; 11% above 2019’s pre-Covid trough;
• real* value of new non-residential buildings consented in the year ended May 2026 was $2,479 million: 1% below April; 18% above August’s trough; 4% above a year ago; 29% below 2022 and 2019 peaks; 8% above the 2020 trough;
• real* value of imports by Auckland seaports for the year ended May 2026 was $33.1 billion: slowly rising 8% since October 2024, still 4% below April 2023, but 23% higher than the 2020 Covid trough. For the rest of New Zealand, the figure was $33.4 billion: a sudden 3% uptick. Auckland has mostly been half the New Zealand total since 2018; before then 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.

July 2026

Previous updates. 

January

February

March

April

May

June

2025

November

December