A landlord falsely accused by her tenant of being a drug user has failed in a bid for $2,000 in damages.

The ASB’s latest Housing Confidence Survey shows Kiwis are expecting house prices to hit the lows of the Global Finance Crisis (GFC).

Auckland’s property sales last month slumped to their lowest for at least a quarter of a century. Barfoot & Thompson, the biggest residential agency in the city, sold just 410 properties, down 45% on the number sold in February last year.

Housing affordability in Wellington is now the best in the country’s main centres because house prices have fallen the most over the past year.

Houses wiped out by recent flooding and Cyclone Gabrielle could be into the thousands and while the timing and magnitude of the impacts of these events is uncertain the direction is not.

The number of listings last month on the country’s oldest real estate website fell to the lowest for 16 years.

Despite headwinds, retail is bouncing back after three years of buffeting by Covid, declining house prices and a now softer economy.

Asking prices for houses more than doubled in more than half of the country’s districts over the decade 2013-2022.

As interest rates rise and house prices start to come down, mum-and-dad property investors are contemplating whether to sell their investment properties in the expectation that times may get tougher, says Drew Miller, a Ray White Mairangi Bay agent.

Tenants are having to dig deeper into their wallets to pay their rent.

Regular rental property inspections are beneficial for both landlords and tenants, says rental management agency Crockers.

More people are losing money on the resale of their properties than they have been at any time in the past three years.

New Property Investors Federation president Sue Harrison says despite the Government using private investors as a means to prop up their tax coffers which comes at the expense of tenants, the private property rental market is too important to fail.

January house sales plunged to their lowest levels ever, excluding the first pandemic lockdown in 2020 when buyers and sellers came to a virtual standstill.

Any hopes property values are stabilising have been quashed by a 1.1% fall in January, QV data shows.

New Zealand now has more property managers than it has drivers, cooks or architects, census data shows.