The NZ Property Market Podcast
Brought to you by cotality, formerly CoreLogic. Each week co-hosts Nick Goodall and Kelvin Davidson will bring you all the latest news, stats and insight to keep you up to date with everything to do with the NZ residential property market. Including sales volumes, house price indices, buyer activity, interest rates, loan-to-value ratio restrictions and all of the macro economic factors that influence our largest asset class. Contact us on twitter @NickGoodall_CL or @KDavidson_CL
The NZ Property Market Podcast
Affordability, Lending Trends & Economic Influences
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Following the release of the CoreLogic Housing Affordability Report, Nick and Kelvin discuss the state and future of housing affordability, tackling the house price to income ratio, and discussing why, despite improvements, buying a home remains an expensive endeavor. As we navigate this intricate terrain, we ponder whether the simultaneous growth in income and house prices cancels out each other's effects, leaving affordability static.
Then it's onto recent lending trends, as reported by the RBNZ, including the impact of changes to the loan-to-value ratio (LVR) restrictions. There's a certain fascination as we dissect how first-home buyers are capitalising on low deposit loans and why investors with larger deposits are experiencing a surge in activity. Yet, we recognise the elephant in the room - the high-interest rates for larger loans and the limited individuals who can shoulder the extra debt for home ownership.
In the second half of our discussion, we delve into banking trends and loan repricing dynamics. The implications of cashbacks, equity calculators, and loan-to-value ratio restrictions come under the microscope. Together, we assess the potential impact of recent economic data releases on GDP and ponder the influence of the Chinese economy on the global market. This episode is the perfect blend of deep insights and lighthearted conversation - a must-listen for anyone interested in the nuances of the New Zealand property market.
Sign up for news and insights or contact on LinkedIn, Twitter @NickGoodall_CL or @KDavidson_CL and email nick.goodall@cotality.co.nz or kelvin.davidson@cotality.co.nz
Kia ora and welcome to the New Zealand Property Market Podcast brought to you by CoreLogic, produced by HSTV on 28th August 2023. I've been a researcher at Goolal and I'm joined by Chief Economist Kelvin Davidson. Kelvin, how are you, mate? How was the weekend?
Speaker 2:Pretty good, pretty normal. Well, it's not quite normal. My wife was away again so I was so like currenting which, like I said last week, I guess it's challenges but also getting easier. Yeah, do we mention the Elblaks? Maybe not. I've already mentioned it but maybe don't discuss it. Yeah, what I want to turn around from those earlier season results hard to believe, but the nature of sport, I guess. And yeah, maybe we move on from that relatively quickly. How was your weekend?
Speaker 1:Yeah, all good mate. Yeah, you had to bring it up, didn't you? What an absolute shambles of a game, and I am still questioning the sensibility of having that game. I know that we thought they needed to hit out and everything, but I just struggled to see what they could have achieved no less suspensions and injuries and it just seems so dumb right now. I probably wasn't as negative against it prior to the game, so maybe this is all in hindsight after it turned out so terribly. But you're happily left at half time to go to my son's football. So, yeah, I think that was probably the best thing for everybody that I stopped watching. So I've only seen Cam Roy Goods try from the second half, and so that's all I'm going to stick to is my last memory of that game, because everything else seems absolute shambles of a match, anyway, playing one of the toughest teams in World Rugby prior to World Cup.
Speaker 1:But anyway, otherwise, my weekend was all good, pretty cruisy and even a little bit of DIY. We're actually getting pretty close to the end of this renovation extension. There's some things we didn't have quoted for, like painting Alpagola, so I did a bit of DIY painting that on yesterday, on Sunday, so that's always a bit therapeutic and quite good and always nice to feel like you're achieving something. Given, the whole extension has been someone else doing everything. Actually, getting a paintbrush and doing a bit was quite nice too. So, yeah, otherwise, mate, no drama. Should we get into things then? Is there anything else you want to touch on before we get into the week that was.
Speaker 2:No, no, that's still good Paintings. Quite a satisfying job, isn't it? You can see the progress and actually it's something, and how much it can do, and it makes a reasonably good job. So I like it too.
Speaker 1:Not that I've got much to do, but yeah, I hear you, it's the prep work that sucks, like the sanding and the taping and all that stuff. If someone could do that and I just turned up with a paintbrush or a roller, that's all good, but yeah, it's all the prep that sucks. So, yeah, anyway, cool my whiskey into it Last week. In terms of data releases, we of course, did have our housing affordability report that was released, and I know we touched on this again last week, but it is such a key determinant for me of demand and therefore where property values are going, and not just in the short term either. I think, particularly when we've been focusing on this measure of the average proportion of income required to service in mortgage today, that is going to be a key factor for where the market's going to go to in the future.
Speaker 1:In terms of the headline takeouts, for me it was the fact that we've seen some improvements in affordability in 2023, but it's only very minor and to me it really lays that foundation for the fact that we're going to see kept demand very restricted growth over the next year or so at least, of course, depending on what happens with our economy, and of interest rates too.
Speaker 1:So there's a few key things to watch in the future and the impact they'll have on affordability. But to me this is such a key one. Go and check out the report and we do go right down to every single you know territorial authority, those little towns and districts across the country, to see where affordability lies. And that could also be a key thing to watch for in terms of you know which areas might see more growth than others as we move through. You know what we're saying is this next phase of the cycle, as we essentially hit the bottom, can be some volatility to come, but what areas might see more of you know, maybe a longer drop, maybe a bit of a flatter period or some growth in some areas too. So, in terms of your take on the report, or the coverage or some of the conversations you've had in the last week or so around that report, kelvin, what do you want to take that one?
Speaker 2:I think a summary in one sentence is cheaper but not cheap. I might have mentioned that last week, I can't quite recall. I've been saying it to lots of people Housing affordability has got better, the house prices have come down and incomes have gone up. Of course, on, say, the house price to income ratio, well, it's got better, so cheaper. But it started from such a stretch position that you've hardly called it cheap To have many people rushing out and saying, well, gee, look how cheap housing is.
Speaker 2:It's just a case of a bit less expensive than it used to be. Certainly, when you look at the mortgage payments figures still 49% of average household income going on a recently new mortgage. It's still way above the average of 38 that we've seen for the past 20 years. So it's still pretty stretched. I guess, unfortunately, this might be as good as it gets. I think house prices have pretty much bottomed out. Yes, we might see some income growth, but also we might see some house price growth. So those things are kind of cancel each other out and it leaves you with affordability kind of about as good as it gets. And then maybe longer term over a period of two years, three years, whatever mortgage rates might come down you see, great, that's going to help affordability. But of course flip side is house prices might go up. So again you have those offsetting influences. So it could be that, yeah, this is sort of as good as it gets Now. I mean, housing affordability isn't the be all and end all. It's not going to tell you everything, it doesn't.
Speaker 2:I don't think we should necessarily say you know, just because it's at this level, house prices have to do that to get it back down to the to that level over a period of three years or five years, whatever. It doesn't quite work like that. You know we've seen lots of, lots of periods in the past where affordability ratios go to a peak, or in other words, affordability got bad. You know it looked terrible and everyone says, oh, that's as bad as it gets. And you go through another cycle and those measures just get even worse. So you know it does that. There are sort of caveats with it. But absolutely you can't just pay ever rising shares of your income to service debt. You know there has to be a limit somewhere. So yeah, at some point these things will kick in and it has to be a long run.
Speaker 2:Restraint when you think about other things going on around credit rules and, potentially, debt to income ratio caps, and so, yeah, it's definitely a big part of the story. It's going to be restrained on the market and, yes, we've seen an improvement but, you know, not much really given from, given the stretch that we started from. So that's pretty much my take on it. It's, yeah, cheaper, but certainly not cheap.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we talk about what fundamental things can shift over a long period of time and our recent presentations. I've been talking about affordability. I say you know we're not going to see a doubling of incomes like we have in the past you know household incomes when we had such so many more or such a significant increase in double household income families. You know we can't really go to triple household income families, or more than that I suppose you could in the circumstances out there of people who you know might have three people living to a house, paying mortgage you know whether it's a couple plus a friend or a family member to ensure that they can buy and live in the place they want to. But that's not going to happen to the same occurrence that double household incomes do when both partners and a family start working. So those are the things like you say that have meant that those house prices have been able to grow so far compared to incomes because those incomes have grown so much and that leads the house prices up. So you know we just whether those fundamental shifts can happen again. You know we can't see interest rates drop from 15 or 20% to 5% again. Yes, they might drop from 5% to 7%, to 3% or 4% again in the future, but that shift is nowhere near the size we've seen in the past, and so I think it's all these things that have enabled prices to grow so significantly over a long period of time you know, multiple decades. It's hard to see them occurring once again, and that's why we do think it's going to be a key constraint on the market in the future and lead to, you know, long term house price growth averaging around about the 3% mark, you know, alongside household income, rather than the 6% or 7%, which has been over, you know, multiple decades. So, yeah, I think that's why it's so important for me and why we certainly pin a lot of our focus when doing presentations around. You know what do these ratios look like, particularly around proportion of income required to service a mortgage, so that's why it's key for me and why we'll continue to track this and have our six monthly report data being updated and behind that as well.
Speaker 1:So if anyone ever wants the detail stuff, just give a touch of us as well. We can certainly talk about providing that to you. Moving on, though, and we'll talk about interest rates and lending figures. Of course, we do have July lending figures from the Reserve Bank out last week and we also got a new data set from the Reserve Bank around lending by loan type. So from a broader lending perspective, pretty subdued. But most importantly, we're focusing on what's happening with those high LVR proportions. There was a bit of a change last month, not just with investors but also in our occupying. So if you can take us through that data and maybe at the same time I know there's a new data set out those loan types and this is something we've been talking about for a while understanding the split between people getting lending for a purchase of a property, for a top up of their mortgage or through a bank switch or something else around bridging so whether you can take us through your first interpretation of that data as well, calvin.
Speaker 2:So Reserve.
Speaker 1:Bank focus and what's going on from a data around lending mate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, lots to talk about here. So the figures we've had forever. You know the monthly reporting on gross lending activity they're available.
Speaker 2:We had $5 billion of new loans in July, which was $400 million lower than the same time last year. Now that's the 23rd, 4th, 1st of Rome when you look at lending on a year on year basis. So yeah, I guess the aggregate terms that's still pretty quiet out there Now. That fall was bigger if you go back a few months, so we sort of see a less negativity, but it's still pretty soft out there.
Speaker 2:In terms of lending flows, yeah, focus on that LVR breakdown. We had 9% of loans going out to owner occupiers and a loan deposit or less than 20% or higher at high LVR. Now that if you go back to the previous month of June that was closer to 6%. I was kind of surprised and maybe this sort of lags here it takes a bit of time to get it through the process. I was kind of a little bit surprised at the previous number was as low as that. Because LVR is the lucid first of June, I kind of thought there'd be a faster sort of flow through. We might have seen that number pick up earlier, but still, we've got it now 9% of lending to owner occupiers of that loan deposit.
Speaker 2:That's certainly the highest number has been for I think it's kind of pushing up towards two years, 18 months, something like that. So yeah, and getting that speed limit still 15%. So it's still below the speed limit but we know that banks tend to keep maybe a 5% point buffer. So that's probably got about as big as it's going to get maybe in terms of where lending is sitting compared to that speed limit. So we're certainly seeing that flow through illustrates that you lose LVRs, you get a response and that's certainly what we're seeing there for owner occupiers, First-home buyers, still absorbing a lot of that allowance. So there's all those low deposit loans going out to owner occupiers, First-home buyers, still taking about 75%, I think, of that allowance, 75% to 80%. So certainly the way the first-home buyers are getting in is using low deposit.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, those investors with a 35% to 40% deposit who were previously locked out, right at the first of June they saw their share of activity with them that investor total go up again in July. So again, I think it just illustrates that when you shift LVRs we are seeing a bit of a response. So yeah, that was the interesting part of that set of figures. Interestingly, we're still low but yeah, and that overall total was low but overall some shifts going on with LVRs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think I suppose it's not a surprise that we see that lift in owner occupier. But I think one of the things we've been talking about was that we might not see it go all the way or we might not see owner occupiers be able to use that first-home buyer in particular, because less deposit means higher loans at a high interest rate of course, which means it's quite hard to service that debt. And I suppose the key from this really points to is that those people using that are generally going to be relatively high-income individuals or high-income households that kind of get the deposit together necessarily, but they do have relatively high incomes to be able to service a more good job. What is it? At $500,000, $600,000, and at the interest rates we're talking about, what are you securing around? About $7000,000,000? That's quite a lot in terms of what your payment is going to look like, and that's why we didn't think they'd be able to be fully embraced necessarily by the bank, because how many people are out there that can afford the loan the size that you need to to buy a house at the price that they're at and then servicing that at the high interest rates we're seeing at the moment? So I suppose in some ways it is a legal.
Speaker 1:We know that the Reserve Bank and the banks can pull around LBI's, but there's always going to be a limited amount of people that can get through anyway, because they're having to service that at a certain level and not only service it but be tested at an even higher rate, as if they can pay it as well.
Speaker 1:So I still think it does cap the amount of people that are going to be able to use this lending limit and maybe in some ways while you mentioned that it took a little while to get up to see that share lift up to 9%, in some ways I'm surprised it actually went there as fast, because I didn't think there would be many people out there able or willing to take on that extra level of debt by having a lesser mortgage. So, yeah, I just want to touch on that side of things too. But I think, from a best perspective, absolutely, the fact that they can maybe rearrange their lending, rearrange their finances to push towards that 35% deposit limit or 65% equity or loan size sorry, that maybe is not as much of a surprise with the ability of investors with multiple properties to be able to do that too. So yeah, just wanted to chime in with that stuff when we're looking at the interpretation of that data anyway, but you can pass back to you in terms of that new data as soon as well, kelvin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cool, yeah and a good point. And also around pushing lending out at a low deposit to have that speed limit. It's a bit circular, but you also have to have some lending going out at high deposits. So the banks have to be kind of confident on both sides of the equation and have to get some higher equity lending coming in the door to allow them to push out some lower equity lending. So there's that as well. So you've got to have some sort of strong borrowers coming in to allow that speed limit.
Speaker 1:So it must be a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great point and, like I said, maybe that's why there was a little bit of delay, between June and July, I suppose is the banks make sure their books are solid of high equity, low deposit I'm sorry, high equity, high deposit before they can then start to open up to those with low deposit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there must be a bit of sort of give and take monitor a day today and like, oh, we've done a bit of that, we can do a bit of that. Yeah, because you know risk. And that's why I keep the buffer as well to up to that speed limit, because you know you don't want to run the risk of going over. So, yeah, heaps of interesting stuff going on there. But then we got this new breakdown. So this is breaking down that $5 billion into the type of loan or what the I guess what the loan is for. You know there's lots of different breakdowns they provide, but borrow a type by the type of finance and just only principal repayment.
Speaker 2:This time we got is it for a property purchase, is it for a top up or it's the other type, is it for a bank switch? And there's another category as well which is things like bridging finance, that type of stuff. But pretty much this is something I've been kind of kind of waiting for. You know, I've been seeing these numbers and I was like, oh, is it? People topping up with their switching banks, particularly with all the cashbacks, and I guess this repricing thing coming through? You know, people are pretty sensitive to interest rates at the moment. You know, could we get a bit of insight into? Well, if one bank gives a particularly good interest rate, are people switching to get that rate? So we've finally got the figures and probably in some ways they didn't actually tell us that much. Really They'll be interested to keep an eye on. But I suppose we got kind of what you'd expect that most of the lending is going to buy in properties, but there is also some big switching going on and some top ups going on.
Speaker 2:Now probably for me the thing that was of most interest was that when you look at it in share terms, the share of lending on bank switching has gone up over time, and so you might look at that in one sense and say you know, it kind of makes sense. Cashbacks, people shopping around trying to get the best deal when interest rates are high. Now that's one look at it. But on the other hand, the share, the switching share, of overall lending has only really gone up because other types of lending have gone down. So property purchase loans have come down, top ups have come down. No surprise, the top ups have come down because you know house prices are lower, you don't have as much sort of usable equity, as they call it. So that no surprises there. So that's why the switching share has gone up, really because other lending has come down. If you look at it in value terms, per month switching is pretty flat. Number of loans per month is pretty flat. So, yeah, it was more about the fall away for those other types of loans.
Speaker 2:And you just touched on what is the size of a loan. Well, this allows us to look at that. The average size of a switching loan in July, was it, you think, july, $600,000 when people switch their loans from one provider to another, for property purchase, $546,000. So that's basically the average size of a new mortgage, I guess, for purchasing a property, and a top up was $105,000. So that's how much people are sort of withdrawing in terms of equity when they top up. So yeah, really good data set, really useful. The thing I suppose we'd still be ideally having is what happens when all of these repricing loans are rolling over. What are those people doing? Are they taking out a one year fix or a six month fix or floating whatever?
Speaker 2:That's just something we can't quite put our finger on just yet. But yeah, Reserve Bank's making heaps of strides in getting us new data sets, so that's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you're just going to love that transparency right. Like you said, there's data sets around there looking at who's borrowing. There's data sets around looking at the type of lending, in terms of interest only or otherwise. We do get the fixed and floating proportions now as well, how long they're choosing at origination. So we're getting some great detail now that this is another level of understanding what's going on and you're bang on in terms of the main thing I pulled out from it, too, was that that switching numbers from bank to bank was actually quite consistent over time in terms of raw numbers or raw dollar value.
Speaker 1:You know, as you said, the proportion. Your interpretation would be there's been heaps more people switching, but actually, nah, it's really consistent over time. It's just the fact that the others have come down so much that makes it look like the share of them has increased. So I think that's a really really important distinction to make. Really interesting from a banking perspective, of course, to say that you know, yes, it's great that you've got good deals out there or whatever, but the fact is there's only so many people out there who are willing or able, or to a decision point where they're actually able to switch anyway.
Speaker 1:So yeah, really really interesting insight from that perspective and certainly around the size of those loans too, and understanding what's actually happening from a purchasing perspective as well and you know the top ups is really interesting from a coragic perspective. So I don't know if people would have seen, but we did actually just recently release our equity calculator and really helping people to understand what is your level of equity, which can then help you if you did want to go and get a top up, whether that's for personal reason or you wanted to do a renovation yourself and you can really get a good view on that from our equity calculator as well. So that'd be quite dialed into that top up figure and what's going on that space and knowing that you know on average, like I said, most people that get a top up they're doing so around about that $100,000 level and you know using that to some sort of means or end as well. So, yeah, good insight there from a business perspective as well as understanding you know, just from an activity perspective, what's going on out there too. So I'm sure there'll be plenty of useful uses out there for understanding that data and, as you said, over time, what we're always interested in is the change in trend over time. So when there is a change in the market one reason or another whether it's regulatory or market driven or seasonal driven or whatever do we start to see a change in the way and what people are borrowing and how they're borrowing it as well.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, always a reason we pay such close attention to that stuff.
Speaker 2:Cool man with that run. I'll just jump in with a couple more things. I mean, yeah, it does. It does raise the question of the whole. We've seen big rises in cashbacks. I suppose there's been bouts of cashbacks. It does you do say, well, did they actually work? I mean, like you say, there's only a certain number of people who might actually be tempted to switch anyway when you look at the numbers through time. So it does raise that question. I guess if everybody else is offering cashbacks, you kind of have to. But yeah, there is that and you've done marketing. It raises questions around what actually works and what doesn't.
Speaker 2:It's always struck me that they just offer the best rates. That's something that would attract the punters in. And yeah, I suppose also these are loan events. That's the thing about them. And I suppose, around switching if you've had any awareness of things going on around lending lately triple CFA, really strict expense testing, or that you might go oh yeah, I'm not going to try your own event here because I don't want to have to you know, show my statements.
Speaker 2:So maybe triple CFA has sort of worked out a way in terms of the impact of cashbacks. But yeah, lots of, lots of theories, who knows? But also, as these figures develop and the months go by, we can certainly tear it out a bit more. But yeah cool to have anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean on the bank switching side of things like you say. It's not like they increase the instances of people switching banks, it's just making sure that when they do switch, they switch to you.
Speaker 1:And we do track the market share of those banks when they do switch and you can see that over time, you know, depending on, might be above the one campaign or just work that's going on below the line through brokers or whatever it might be that you do see, you know some quite significant shifts over a period of time. Where banks are really strong campaign or maybe strong rates or cashbacks or whatever it is, we do see some pretty significant shifts over time and it can differ by by a time, by location, by all sorts of things as well. So, yeah, it is a really interesting one.
Speaker 1:And yeah, as an analyst you can certainly, you know, analyze it to death and get pretty fascinated with what's going on and the impacts of the of your market activity, to see what people do off the back of that, and you're going to really good at doing. An analyst is always looking at that and tracking different campaigns and you can see some of those links too. So certainly a bit of a credit to the marketing teams out there and those banks that when they, when they get out there and they've got a good strong offer and a good strong campaign, they can get results off the back of that.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, certainly intriguing and maybe not from a market perspective in terms of you know, the overall market, but from the more micro level and what's going on, who's winning? It's really interesting anyway. Cool man. Well, let's move on from the lending side of things.
Speaker 1:And the only thing I want to look back on from last week and maybe we'll be pretty brief on this it's just a couple of releases around some of the data that we use to understand what's happening in the economy, particularly from a GDP perspective. I did see we got retail trade data for Q2 last week and it was a lot weaker than expected and while we generally have talked about probably out of recession for Q2, from that recession that we saw in Q4 last year and Q1 this year, this probably puts a little bit of doubt to that and there's certainly some downside risks to that GDP. And the other one that I saw from A&Z was from the heavy truck index, which essentially measures I suppose you know how much trucks are traveling around the country. That actually fell as well, again, more than probably was expected.
Speaker 1:So yeah, anything on those releases or anything other from an economic perspective that surprised you, or give us a bit of a lead to what we might get for that Q2 GDP data, Kelvin and just maybe even a broad field for economics and what's going on across the country.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think probably the retail sales number. I don't know if people provide sort of forward expectations of the truck index, for example. I think it's probably one of those ones where people are kind of watching it. It's interesting but it's not really part of, I guess, an analyst's kind of core set of data that they might try and predict and use as a sort of input into other models. But certainly retail sales for sure, and so we have expectations for that.
Speaker 2:You know, from some of the sort of consensus type surveys, that sort of thing, and people were actually anticipating that retail sales, in volume terms, or inflation adjusted, would have been flat in Q2 when actually they fell 1%. So that was the third four in a row. Retail sales you know a big part of the economy I don't know what percentage actually off the top of my head, but pretty big chunk of what goes on. We're all spending in shops every day, online or physically or whatever. So retail sales pretty big part of it and they were yet down 1% when actually the expectation was flat.
Speaker 2:So I think, if anything, you have to look at it and say, yeah, it has negative implications for GDP. You know, if anything, it raises that risk. But actually we have re-entered a recession already. You know we might be in the early stages of it already. So, yeah, disappointing result, I suppose. If you want to look at it positively, you know if you've got a big mortgage, well, you know, not great from the economy sort of economic growth side, but I think it's not going to be a big deal. So, yeah, I think we're going to have to look at the future of the economy and see what the future holds, and I think we're going to have to look at it in a way that's going to be a big deal. I think that's a good point, and I think that's a good point, and I think that's a good point. I'm not going to take a big break from the economy sort of economic growth side, but it does suggest a slower inflation and the OCR doesn't need to rise again.
Speaker 2:Perhaps mortgage rates don't need to sort of increase too much further either. So that's where I began with my thinking on that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's cool. I think you probably answered that with a little bit more uncertainty around the Chinese economy, of course, pretty big power internationally and the effect that has around the world from a economic perspective. So I suppose maybe like to say the ultimate point here is this is building up and we probably put out a weaker economy later on in the year, weaker inflation, which then certainly means less of a need for the OCR to lift up and maybe proposes the potential for OCRs to fall around the world sooner rather than, like I know, the latest two banks. So forecast was I think it was pushing into 2025 and then 2024 at the moment, so maybe that's going to be a good point for the key in this sort of weak economic, new to weak economic data coming through as well. So, yeah, plenty of people need to watch forth from that perspective because it does have such a significant impact on future decision making for the reserve bank. So good to touch on that stuff too. Okay, my only sort of quick look ahead. Of course, we do have the house price index for August coming out for ourselves later on this week. I think that's going to media Thursday for a release on Friday, I think, probably more detail on this, you know, and conservative commerce or the markets revival of the market will be actually across the country, but I think we'll probably detail that in that release Few releases for July coming up to it For stats, new Zealand's job.
Speaker 1:So from a employment perspective, we still have to put it both there. Nzac for July. So this is our early read on the economy coming up for July, the first month of Q3. So that'll be an interesting one to watch for as well. Well, in consents for July. Well, so there's been some vulnerability in that construction sector and plenty of chatter around how that pipeline is going to start to slow down Full for now but certainly going to slow down for the rest of this year and also for consumer confidence. So plenty of economic releases coming this week. Calvin, is there anything in particular you want to talk about? You're expecting on that, or are you going to leave most of it reviewing next week?
Speaker 2:Well, sort of expectations that actually just been checking my phone and we've got so the full jobs number is out and it was also been expecting a little bit of growth and lo and behold, it was up went 3% month on month, season adjusted, so we've seen more employment growth. Now we'll kind of dig more deep into it next week, I suppose, but just for now, labour markets still holding up, just seeing the NZAC as well. So it was up 0.4% from a year ago. Now, from memory, this is kind of a probably, if anything, slightly disappointing result. We just talked about retail sales, but weaker in Q2.
Speaker 2:This NZAC relates to July, so it's actually into, I suppose, that first glimpse of Q3, which people are thinking. You know it could be the start of the reset of another recession. So probably, if anything, I have to do my little math things to translate it into what it might mean for GDP. But yeah, for now, that the NZAC is probably a bit disappointing does, does highlight maybe those recessionary risks and yeah, do I like consensus and trends definitely down once those. I suppose the hope from those consumer and business confidence surveys is that we'll see that favourable combination of maybe sentiment that's still kind of negative, but at least not as negative. And inflation expectations, cost expectations, what firms are thinking in terms of their pricing, maybe all of that moderating a bit as well. So yeah, that's sort of fingers crossed scenario. It has kind of what we've been seeing over a three or four month period. So I guess your fingers crossed, that will continue. And yeah, house price index we'll see what comes out of that. It'll be available later in the week.
Speaker 2:I hope you get the data pretty shortly and you get stuck in the writing that up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no good, there's going to be a lot of focus on that one. And yeah, good to get the early take. You know, live take essentially on some of those economic releases too. So thanks for that. Okay, matt, that's pretty much us. Do you have any last thoughts, calvin?
Speaker 2:Only one small thing Up the was Up.
Speaker 1:The was Love it, mate, all right. Well, thanks as per usual, mate. Love, love all your insights there and certainly love your final comment. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for listening. Please do make sure you subscribe to the show, go download some of your reports as well and do feel free to get in touch with us as well. If there's anything else that we're sort of missing in coverage, please do let us know. Just want to say thanks again. My name is Nick. He's Calvin. You've listened to the Evelin Property Market Podcast. Iate자미연파 podcaster. Love you too. Great job. Thanks, always special to you.
