More bad news for first-home buyers: New housing affordability data shows the country's house price-to-income ratio has climbed to its equal highest point since data gathering began in 2004. The latest CoreLogic Housing Affordability report puts the average house price-to-average household income ratio in the last quarter of 2020 at 6.8 nationally. Most of the main centres experience deterioration in housing affordability, particularly Tauranga, Hamilton, Wellington, and Dunedin. “The key message from this report is that housing affordability worsened quite appreciably in the final three months of 2020. While the decline in housing affordability revealed by CoreLogic’s data was quite dramatic, long-time housing affordability researcher Hugh Pavletich said the figures were still more conservative than he would estimate.

Source: Stuff February 24, 2021 15:56 UTC