Foreigners bought three per cent of all New Zealand properties sold between April and June this year, new data from Land Information NZ shows. While the national figure is similar to the previous quarter, there has been a one per cent increase in sales in Auckland to foreign tax residents.

New Zealand residential building consents reached their highest annual total in more than a decade, driven by activity in Auckland and surrounding regions. Seasonally adjusted consents increased 16 per cent to 29,097 in the year through June, the highest total for a June year since 2004 and the highest annual total since the April 2005 year, Statistics New Zealand said. For the month of June, new home consents rose 16 per cent from May and 35 per cent from June last year, the agency said.

Auckland's houses will grow upwards but the city's boundaries aren't coming down, according to the proposal for the city's long-term planning rulebook. Auckland Council on Wednesday revealed the recommendations it's been given about the layout of the city's Unitary Plan, which will dictate what can be built and where for at least a decade - and more density and an bigger, but still present, city limit have come out as key themes.

New Zealand house prices will rise another 17 per cent before peaking late next year as accelerating building scrambles to right the imbalance between a lack of houses and growing demand, says economic consultancy Infometrics. The Wellington-based firm sees 2017 as a peak for the market. It forecasts a fall-off in demand as the rapid inflow of new migrants starts to ease, while new building eats into the supply shortage.

Property investors in New Zealand borrowed far more than first home buyers last month and took out a much greater number of mortgages, just-released figures show. The NZ Reserve Bank's June lending data shows investors borrowed $NZ2.56 billion ($A2.40 billion) while first home buyers borrowed less than a third of that, $NZ738 million.

ASB Bank and ANZ Bank New Zealand have followed Westpac Banking Corp's lead in clamping down on lending to property investors by requiring at least a 40 per cent deposit ahead of Reserve Bank restrictions. Westpac made the same move on Wednesday after the central bank said earlier this week it intends having the new lending restrictions in force by September 1 and asked lenders to comply with the spirit of the new regulations immediately.

The New Zealand Reserve Bank's new restrictions on highly-leveraged home loans are likely to be a boon to non-bank lenders, which make up a fraction of all mortgages. The central bank expects a drop of up to 15 per cent in the volume of home sales and reduce house price inflation by up to 5 per cent when it introduces restrictions on banks' high loan-to-value ratio mortgages from September.

Westpac Banking Corp in New Zealand has announced it will not take any new loan applications from property investors who do not have a 40 per cent deposit from 4.30pm on Wednesday, some six weeks earlier than required by the NZ Reserve Bank. The central bank on Tuesday said it intends have the new lending restrictions in force by September 1 and asked lenders to comply with the spirit of the new regulations immediately.

The central bank wants to cap bank lending to property investors with a deposit of less than 40 per cent at 5 per cent, according to a consultation paper released on Tuesday. It also wants to restore the 10 per cent limit for owner-occupiers wanting to take out a mortgage with a deposit of less than 20 per cent.

A slower-than-expected pace of inflation has added to the case for an interest rate cut next month as a strong New Zealand dollar continues to keep a lid on imported prices. The consumers price index rose 0.4 per cent in the June quarter from a year earlier, missing the Reserve Bank's estimate of 0.6 per cent and tracking below the bank's target band for annual inflation of one-to-three per cent for the seventh straight quarter.