Do Elections Affect House Prices? Not Really.

What Is the Real Relationship Between Elections and the Property Market?

Shout out to Opes Partners, who have done some great work looking at the relationship between New Zealand elections and the housing market. Their broad conclusion is simple, and important.

Elections appear to affect sales volumes more than house prices.

In other words, buyers and sellers can become more cautious before an election. Some people wait to see who wins. Others delay decisions because they are unsure what policy changes may follow. That hesitation can lead to fewer sales before an election, followed by a lift in activity once the result is known.

But the bigger surprise is that the slowdown is usually not dramatic. The Opes Partners research suggests sales volumes tend to fall by around 5 to 10 percent, rather than collapsing. The other important point is timing. This slowdown does not suddenly begin on election month, or even in the final few months of the campaign. It often starts 6-9 months earlier.

That matters, because if you are thinking about the current market, we are not waiting for the slowdown to arrive. We are already in it. The hesitation has already begun. The lower activity has already been showing up. So the question is not whether the election might slow the market later. The better question is whether much of that election-related caution has already been priced into buyer and seller behaviour.

But the key point from the Opes Partners research is that house prices themselves do not appear to move in a clean election driven pattern. Prices tend to keep following the bigger market trend. That is the national view.

But I wanted to know whether the same pattern shows up in Grey Lynn. Not Auckland generally. Not New Zealand generally. Grey Lynn specifically.

Why Grey Lynn? Because I live in Grey Lynn, I work in and around the area, and I am currently planning to sell my own home here. So this is not just a theoretical market question for me. If elections genuinely affect prices, that matters. If they mainly affect buyer confidence, timing, and sales activity, but not the actual value of homes, that matters too.

So I looked at nine New Zealand general election cycles and compared Grey Lynn sales in the months before, during, and after each election, to see if they followed the same trend as the Opes Partners national data.

The result was clearer than I expected. The Grey Lynn data broadly supports the main Opes Partners point. Elections may shift sales activity, but they do not appear to meaningfully impact Grey Lynn house prices. Everyone loves to repeat the "fact" that you should not sell during an election. But if you're worried about it impacting prices, there is no evidence of that being a factor. That is the big headline.

The national trend: elections affect behaviour more than value

We can all agree that elections create uncertainty. And that uncertainty can affect behaviour. We think buyers and sellers will hold back or delay their plans, and some do. Some people do delay listing. and some may wait until after the result before making a decision.

That does reduce the number of homes sold before an election and increase the number of homes sold afterwards. But that is different from saying elections impact house prices. A slower market is not automatically a falling market.

It is very easy for people to talk about “the market slowing down” as if it means prices must be falling. But sales volume and sale price are not the same thing. You can have fewer sales without values falling. You can have cautious buyers without homes suddenly becoming cheaper. You can have fewer transactions because people are waiting, not because prices have moved.

That is where the Grey Lynn data becomes interesting. Because locally, across nine election cycles, the clearest finding is not that prices dropped before elections or jumped after them.

The clearest finding is that prices did not show a consistent election effect.

What I analysed

I looked at Grey Lynn house sales across nine New Zealand general elections: 1996, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2014, 2017 and 2023. For each election cycle, I split the sales into three periods:

1. The months before the election

2. The election period itself

3. The months after the election

Then I compared two things. First, sales activity. Did more or fewer homes sell before, during, or after the election? Second, sale prices. Did median sale prices fall before the election, stall during the election, or rise afterwards?

That was the key test. If elections genuinely affect prices, we should expect to see some kind of repeated price pattern across the nine cycles. But that is not what the Grey Lynn data showed.

The biggest finding: Grey Lynn prices did not show a clear election effect

Across the nine election cycles, Grey Lynn sale prices did not move in a consistent election related direction. Some post election periods had higher median prices than the pre election period. Some had lower median prices. Some were broadly steady. There was no clean or repeated pattern that would allow you to say:

“Grey Lynn prices usually fall before an election.”

Or:

“Grey Lynn prices usually rise after an election.”

Or:

“Buyers get better value during an election period.”

The data does not support those claims. That is the most important finding. It also lines up with the main point from Opes Partners: elections may change market behaviour, but they do not

appear to change the underlying price direction in any reliable way. For a seller, that matters. Because the common fear is that an election will hurt your price. Based on the Grey Lynn data, and the Opes Partners national data, that fear looks unfounded.

An election may affect how busy the market feels. It may affect how quickly some buyers make decisions. It may reduce urgency for a period of time. But the data does not show that elections reliably impact what Grey Lynn homes sell for.

Sales volume changed more than prices

The sales volume picture was more interesting. This is where the Grey Lynn data gives some support to the other part of the Opes Partners argument. Across the nine election cycles, post election sales activity was higher than election period activity in five of the nine cycles. Post election sales pace was also higher than pre election sales pace in five of the nine cycles.

So there is some evidence of activity lifting after elections.

That supports the idea that some buyers and sellers may wait for the election to pass before acting. But the pattern was not perfect. Some election cycles showed a clear lull. Others did not.

In some years, activity was actually stronger during the election period than before it. That means the volume pattern is real enough to take seriously, but not strong enough to turn into a fixed rule.

The most accurate reading is this. Grey Lynn somewhat supports the idea of election related changes in sales activity, especially around post election activity, but the evidence is not as strong or consistent as the price finding.

The practical lesson for Grey Lynn homeowners

For Grey Lynn sellers, the practical takeaway is not “ignore the election completely.” That would be too simplistic. Elections can create uncertainty. Uncertainty can change buyer behaviour. Some buyers may pause. Some sellers may delay listing. Some campaigns may feel quieter if active buyers are waiting for more certainty. So yes, an election can matter.

But the Grey Lynn data suggests it matters more to timing and activity than to price. That is a really important distinction. If you are selling a home, the data does not suggest you should automatically wait until after an election because prices will be better. It also does not suggest you should panic if you are selling before an election. The more important questions are still the fundamentals of the campaign:

Is the home presented well?

Is the pricing strategy right?

Is the marketing strong enough to reach the right buyers?

Is the agent creating competition?

Is the property type in demand?

Is there enough active buyer depth for that particular home?

Those factors are likely to matter more than the election itself. The election may affect the mood of the market. But the data does not show that it reliably changes the value of homes.

What this means for my own sale

This is partly why I wanted to look at Grey Lynn properly. I am planning to sell my own home in Grey Lynn, so I wanted to understand whether the election is something that should materially change my thinking.

Coming to the market soon. Probably during an Election period. :)

The data suggests the answer is: only to a point.

If I was only looking at buyer activity, then yes, election timing is worth thinking about.

There may be moments where the market feels quieter. There may be buyers who wait. There may be a lift in activity after the result is known. But if I am asking whether the election itself is likely to determine the price, the data does not support that. That is reassuring, but it is also grounding. It means the focus should stay on the things that are actually controllable: presentation, positioning, pricing, campaign quality, buyer follow up, and creating competition. The election may sit in the background. It should not become the whole story.

For the Data Geeks

The deeper analysis looked at 541 property sales in Grey Lynn across nine New Zealand general election cycles. The election years analysed were: 1996, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2014, 2017 and 2023. Each cycle was split into three periods:

1. Pre election

2. Election period

3. Post election

The aim was to test whether Grey Lynn showed the same pattern identified by Opes Partners at a national level: sales volumes being more affected by elections than house prices.

Sales activity

The volume data showed some election related movement, but it was not perfectly consistent.

Post election sales activity was higher than election period activity in five of the nine cycles.

Post election sales pace was also higher than pre election sales pace in five of the nine cycles.

That gives some support to the idea that activity can lift after an election once uncertainty is removed. However, the evidence is mixed. Some cycles showed a clear election period slowdown.

Others did not. This means the Grey Lynn data supports the general idea of volume being more sensitive than price, but it does not support a rigid rule that every election creates a pre election slump and post election rebound.

Price movement

The price data was less supportive of any election effect. Median sale prices did not move in a consistent direction across the nine cycles. In some years, post election median prices were higher. In others, they were lower. In some, the difference was not especially meaningful.

This is the strongest part of the analysis. The Grey Lynn data does not show a reliable pattern of election driven price falls or post election price jumps. That aligns with the main Opes Partners point that prices tend to follow broader market forces rather than election timing alone.

Safe data led statements

Based on the Grey Lynn data, the following statements are fair:

“Grey Lynn broadly supports the Opes Partners view that elections affect sales activity more than prices.”

“The strongest finding in the Grey Lynn data is that elections do not appear to create a consistent price effect.”

“Sales activity did lift after the election period in several cycles, but not consistently enough to call it a fixed rule. and almost always as per the underlying market trend”

“The data does not support the idea that Grey Lynn sellers should automatically wait until after an election to achieve a better price.”

“The election may affect market confidence and buyer timing, but the property, campaign strategy, and level of competition still matter more.”

What the data does not prove

• The data does not prove that elections have no impact at all.

• It does not prove that every Grey Lynn election cycle behaves the same way.

• It does not prove that post election activity always rebounds.

• It does not prove that prices are completely immune to political or policy changes.

• And it does not prove that Grey Lynn behaves like every other Auckland suburb.

  
  

Grey Lynn is a small, high value, tightly held market. The number of sales in some election windows is limited, and the mix of homes sold can affect the median price. But as a local test of the broader Opes Partners idea, the Grey Lynn data is useful. It says the same basic thing. Watch activity around elections, but be careful about assuming elections change house prices.