New Zealand building consents for residential housing have dropped 8.3 per cent as the number of new apartments and retirement units fall from record levels.
New home consents, including apartments, fell to a seasonally-adjusted 1,969 in January from 2,147 a month earlier, according to Statistics New Zealand.
Excluding apartments and units, which are typically volatile from month to month, seasonally-adjusted consents slipped 1.3 per cent to 1,747.
Annual residential issuance rose 26 per cent to an unadjusted 21,616 in the year ended January 31 from the same period a year earlier.
Auckland and Christchurch continued to drive new issuance, with the country's two biggest cities experiencing bubbling property markets due to a lack of housing stock.
