Income - Housing costs to household disposable income ratios by dwelling ownership 2019–2025
Stats NZ
Notes
Housing costs include expenditure on rents and mortgages, property rates, and building-related insurance.
Household income is from disposable (after tax) income.
Dwelling ownership is an aggregation of categories from the 'tenure of household' classification. Tenure refers to the nature of the occupancy of a household in a private dwelling at the time of the survey. It does not refer to the tenure of the land on which the dwelling is situated.
Ratios are calculated using the aggregate housing-costs amount as a proportion of the aggregate household-income amount.
The ratios are not mutually exclusive. Households that pay 30 percent or more of their total household income on housing costs are also included in the 25 percent or more category. Similarly, households that pay 40 percent or more of their total household income on housing costs are included in the 25 percent and 30 percent categories.
Household counts are rounded to the nearest hundred. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place, and are calculated on unrounded figures.
Definitions
Household: is either one person who usually resides alone, or two or more people who usually reside together and share facilities (such as for eating or cooking) in a private dwelling. A household may contain one or more families, other people in addition to a family, or no families at all, such as unrelated people living together.
Disposable income: total income plus tax credits, less ACC levy, less tax payable.
Total housing costs: consists of expenditure from mortgage principal repayments, mortgage interest payments, mortgage application fees, rent payments, other payments associated with renting (for example bonds paid in the last 12 months), property rates payments (both regional and local government), and payments associated with building-related insurance.
For more information
Limitations of the data
Household Income and Living Survey (HILS) replaced the Household Economic Survey (HES) from July 2024.
As with the Household Economic Survey for the year ended June 2020, 2021, and 2022, the pandemic has impacted Stats NZ’s ability to conduct face-to-face interviews in respondent’s homes and no other means of interviewing were available. Therefore, interviewing was not conducted evenly over the whole year. Consequently, the sample size was reduced to 8,900 households from the planned 20,000 households. The reduced sample size means margins of error on the statistics are higher than designed for.
Exclusions
The target population is the usually resident population of New Zealand living in private dwellings, aged 15 years and over. This population does not include:
- overseas visitors who are in New Zealand for less than 12 months
- people living in non-private dwellings such as hotels, motels, boarding houses, hostels, and homes for the elderly
- patients in hospitals, or residents of psychiatric or penal institutions
- members of the permanent armed forces in group living facilities; for example, barracks
- people living on offshore islands (excluding Waiheke Island)
- members of the non-New Zealand armed forces
- non-New Zealand diplomats and their families.
Data provided by
Dataset name
Household Income and Living Survey: Income and housing cost statistics, Year ended June 2025
Webpage:
How to find the data
At URL provided, select 'Household income and housing cost statistics: Year ended June 2025' from under the 'Download Data' heading.
Import & extraction details
File as imported: Household Income and Living Survey: Income and housing cost statistics, Year ended June 2025
From the dataset Household Income and Living Survey: Income and housing cost statistics, Year ended June 2025, this data was extracted:
- Sheet: Table 10
- Range:
B7:I195 - Provided: 336 data points
Dataset originally released on:
February 26, 2026
About this dataset
Household income and housing-cost statistics provide income and expenditure information for households, and demographic data on households and individuals in New Zealand.
The Household Income and Living Survey (HILS) was established to replace the Household Economic Survey (HES) from July 2024.
Purpose of collection
The primary objective of both HES and HILS is to facilitate the analysis and monitoring of the social and economic welfare of New Zealand. Social and economic welfare is measured through income, expenditure, housing costs, net worth, and non-monetary measures.