The housing market remains on ice, with sales subdued for this time of year and prices going nowhere fast, according to the latest ANZ Property Focus report by the bank's economists.
"Listings are high, with property investors finding the cashflow on their investments less tolerable in an environment of flat to falling prices," ANZ says.
"Changes to the bright line test from 1 July could see a surge of listings into the spring that keeps the power on the buyers' side of the table. That points to some downside risk around our house price forecast for a modest 3% rise in prices over 2024," the report said.
The change means for properties sold on or after 1 July the bright-line property tax rule will only apply if the property is sold within two years of acquiring it instead of 10.
However it's not all bad news.
"Every cloud has a silver lining," the ANZ economists say.
"A moribund housing market, all else equal, will make the Reserve Bank more relaxed about the market tendency to price cuts in the Official Cash Rate earlier than they themselves are forecasting, a dynamic that has seen fixed mortgage rates ease a little from their peaks in recent months."
And the report is relatively upbeat on the interest rate front.
"We're optimistic the Reserve Bank will be able to cut [the OCR] before they currently expect, which isn't until August next year, and market participants in aggregate are still punting on a rate cut this year, though much less than they were before the Monetary Policy Statement," it says.
ANZ is New Zealand's biggest housing lender with exposure of $107.5 billion as of March 31.
The comment stream on this article is now closed.
•You can have articles like this delivered directly to your inbox via our free Property Newsletter. We send it out 3-5 times a week with all of our property-related news, including auction results, interest rate movements and market commentary and analysis. To start receiving them, register here (it's free) and when approved you can select any of our free email newsletters.
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.