WELLINGTON, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand's overall housing costs remained unchanged, with increasing rents and declining mortgage interest payments and property rates, the statistics department Stats NZ said on Tuesday.
New Zealand households, on average, paid no more for housing costs in 2019 than they did in 2018, income and property statistics manager Chris Pooch said in a statement.
In the year ended June 2019, households spent on average 17,227 NZ dollars (11,047 U.S. dollars) on housing costs. This is relatively unchanged from 2018. Changes were seen in property and ground rents and mortgage interest payments, statistics showed.
The consumers price index for the June 2019 quarter also showed rent increases over the 2019 year, which was up by 2.5 percent, Stats NZ said.
In the June 2019 year, nearly a third of households spent 30 percent or more of their total household income on housing costs, it said, adding renters were approximately twice as likely than homeowners to spend 40 percent or more of their household income on housing costs.
