The link between New Zealand's residential property boom and consumer spending over the past 10 years was not as close as previously projected, said a report in the Reserve Bank's latest bulletin.

The article by central bank researchers Emmanuel De Veirman and Michael Reddell concludes that consumer spending "did nothing very unusual during an unprecedented housing boom." Instead, high housing prices may have merely altered and not directly affected private consumption in total.

"If house prices had directly influenced total private consumption, we might also have expected to see net household debt (relative to income) rising faster than usual during such a large house price boom. Slightly surprisingly, in New Zealand data there is no sign of that," the researchers noted.

While history marks a positive direct relation between spending for housing and general items, the unexpected changes in house prices only prompted consumers to allocate their budget wisely, so there was no significant increase in private consumption or debts, the report says.

"Restrictions on borrowing make it harder for a household to spend out of future income, they weaken the relationship between consumption and expected future resources, but they strengthen the relation between consumption and currently available resources," they said.