Migrants are taking a smaller share of the residential property market, according to the latest property transfer figures from Statistics NZ.
These show people with residence visas, but not NZ citizenship, were the buyers in 11.8% of the property transfers involving a dwelling in the second quarter of this year.
That was the third consecutive quarter in which residence visa holders' share of NZ dwelling purchases has declined, since it peaked at 14.3% in the third quarter last year.
Prior to the decline over the last three quarters, migrants' share of dwelling purchases had increased steadily from 7.7% when the data series began in the fourth quarter of 2016, to the peak of 14.3% in the third quarter last year. (See graph below).
The figures also show migrants are almost three times as likely to be the buyer of a residential dwelling than they are to be the seller.
People with residence visas made up just 4.3% of the vendors of residential dwellings in the June quarter this year, down from their peak of 5.1% in the March quarter of 2021.
In the 12 months to June 2024, 16,704 New Zealand dwellings were transferred to people with residence visas, which was 13.3% of total sales.
Conversely residence visa holders were the vendors of just 5370 residential dwellings over the same period.
However, the total role migrants play in the property market is likely to be greater than the above figures suggest. That's because many migrants who may have originally had residence visas, go on to obtain New Zealand citizenship. And the property transfer statistics do not differentiate between citizens who migrated to NZ and those who were born here.
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