A bill to stop foreign buyers investing in New Zealand housing has been picked from the members' ballot to be introduced to parliament.

Goodman Property Trust, New Zealand's largest listed property investor, posted a 20 per cent drop in first-half profit, after the year-earlier period was boosted by a revaluation gain on its portfolio.

It's no angel but Auckland's 'halo effect' has blessed the property market with roaring sales, well ahead of national figures and housing stocks back to sustainable levels.

A note on the door of the closed GJ Gardner South Canterbury offices in Timaru. The company went into voluntary liquidation on Monday. The company which holds the GJ Gardner Homes Mid and South Canterbury franchise is in voluntary liquidation.

Restricting the size of a mortgage to a multiple of a homeowner's income proposed by Treasury would hinder, not help, the Auckland housing market the Property Institute says. Ashley Church, chief executive of the institute, said debt-to-income mortgage restrictions could lead to an artificial boom in apartments and could cut first-home buyers even more greatly out of the market if they were introduced.

Fletcher Building's construction unit has won the $NZ477 million ($A446.59 million) contract to build SkyCity's national convention centre, five-star hotel and associated infrastructure in Auckland.

A crash in the Auckland housing market is one of the biggest risks to New Zealand's economy over the next few years, Finance Minister Bill English says. Speaking to a community housing sector conference in Wellington on Friday, Mr English said a fall in house prices would cause problems and he's worried Auckland will follow the same track as "pretty much every other housing market" where prices have gone up year on year.

Auckland is highlighted as one of the world's top investment choices for commercial real estate. International property consultancy JLL says Auckland placed second, behind Sydney, in its latest "investment intensity index" for the Asia-Pacific region.

The BNZ Confidence Survey has found that in most sectors respondents are seeing things as either steady or improving. Construction and engineering are strong, manufacturing doing well, farming is weak but dairy farmers are pulling back from the brink. The Auckland residential real estate market is cooling, but elsewhere things look firm

Auckland housing rents have risen 8.5 per cent in the last year, but rents have climbed the most in the Bay of Plenty.