Home ownership rate lowest in 64 years

New Zealand's home ownership rate is the lowest since 1951. Photo / Doug Sherring

New Zealand's home ownership rate is the lowest since 1951, according to a new look at census figures over the past 100 years.

A Statistics NZ report on A Century of Censuses also shows that the average household size has halved over the past century, from 5.2 people in each dwelling to 2.7, while the median age has risen from 25 to 38.

There has been a continual northwards migration, raising the North Island's share of the population from 58 per cent in 1911 to 76 per cent in 2013.

The Maori population has grown 11-fold, from 53,000 in 1911 to 600,000 in 2013, while the non-Maori population has grown only 3.7 times from almost exactly 1 million to 3.8 million.

The home ownership rate, 53 per cent when first measured in 1916, rose to 61 per cent in 1926, but fell sharply in the Great Depression to a century-long low of just 50 per cent by 1936.

It rose steadily in the post-war years when the Government provided cheap home loans and allowed families to capitalise family benefits to buy their first homes, reaching 69 per cent in 1971 and, after a lull, the century's peak of 73.5 per cent in both the 1986 and 1991 censuses.

The rate has fallen in every census since then after Government support for first home buyers was withdrawn, falling to 64.8 per cent in the 2013 census - the lowest since 1951.