REINZ House Price Index

New Zealand's most trusted gauge of house value trends

What is the REINZ House Price Index?

Developed in partnership with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the REINZ House Price Index (‘HPI’) shows us the true movements of housing values over time.

It’s used by the Reserve Bank, major banks, economists, business analysts, media commentators and everyday Kiwis, as the most definitive gauge of historic and predicted house prices.

The HPI is best described as an analytics tool and is shown visually as a scale. It measures sale price against a ‘value’ influenced by housing attributes, such as land area, floor area, number of bedrooms, etc.

This creates a single, more accurate measure of housing activity and trends over time rather looking at medians or averages.

Why use the REINZ HPI?

There are other HPIs available, but the advantage of ours is sales data from the time a price is locked in (the unconditional date) rather than when a house changes hands (settlement date) – which can be weeks or months later.

This offers a more timely and therefore accurate measure of recent housing market activity.

The REINZ HPI enables our specialists to see market trends at a granular level. This is done using disaggregation of data, meaning we drill down to a smaller data set. You can compare things like building typology (apartment, house, number of bedrooms) and suburbs, wards, regions, and cities, etc.

To access this level of detailed reporting, please contact our data team.

How do I access the REINZ HPI?

REINZ members

Historic HPI data and in-depth reports can be accessed by members in our Statistics Portal for free.

Our analysts can also customise reports to suit your specific client or agency needs – with a cost-effective fee.

Statistics Portal login

Government and other organisations

HPI data and reporting tools can be accessed with our proprietary Statistics Platform for a fee.

For access to parts of the tool, or bespoke reports or datasets, please contact our data consultants.

New Zealanders looking to buy or sell

If your real estate professional is a member of REINZ, they will be able to provide you with HPI information.

Alternatively, the REINZ data team release free HPI monthly insights, to help give you a snapshot of the market.

Historic HPI data can only be accessed for a fee.

HPI Reports

FAQs

Why look at a House Price Index instead of a median or an average?

Data on median and average house prices is open to being skewed by market composition changes. This means observed changes in these values could be almost entirely due to the changed nature in the underlying sample (e.g., an unusually large representation of high-end housing sales) rather than changes in the true market value.

The REINZ HPI takes many aspects of market composition into account resulting in greater accuracy.

It does this by analysing how prices in a market are influenced by a range of attributes such as land area, floor area, number of bedrooms etc. to create a single, more accurate measure of housing market activity and trends over time.

Using the Reserve Bank’s preferred Sale Price to Appraisal Ratio (SPAR) methodology, the REINZ HPI uses unconditional sales data (when all the conditions of a sale and purchase agreement are met) rather than at settlement, which can often be weeks later. It is therefore more accurate and timelier.

Where does REINZ data come from?

REINZ data is based on unconditional sales data which is provided by our 17,000 + members nationwide. Other housing market data sources report on sales once they have become settled.

What is the Sales Price to Appraisal Ratio, or SPAR method?

The Sales Price to Appraisal Ratio, or SPAR method, is the favoured method for developing house price indexes by many international government agencies.

RBNZ found that the SPAR method performed well due to lower month-to-month noise (especially for more disaggregated regional indices), greater stability as more data is added, robustness to sample changes, and higher accuracy in predicting sales prices.

View their detailed report here.

How was the Reserve Bank of New Zealand involved?

In 2017, REINZ partnered with RBNZ to conduct an analysis on HPI methodologies, to ensure the REINZ HPI would be the best performing option for the New Zealand market.

RBNZ conducted an analysis of the four most recognised international HPI methodologies: Sale Price to Appraisal Ratio (SPAR), Standard Hedonic, Repeat Sales and our previous method – the Stratified Median. It was found that the SPAR performed best.

View their detailed report here.