More than 13,000 new homes were consented in Auckland in a year for the first time since the 1970s, New Zealand's statistics department Stats NZ said on Friday.

A total of 13,078 new homes were consented in this New Zealand's largest city in the year ended October 2018, up 25 percent from the year before, and four times as many as the low point in the August 2009 year, Stats NZ said.

"Home permits in Auckland briefly reached a similar high level in the early 1970s, when Auckland's population was less than half what it is now," acting construction statistics manager Dave Adair said.

The number of new homes consented also came close to 13,000 in the June 2004 year, Adair said.

Over the past year, only 48 percent of consented new homes in Auckland were stand-alone houses. The remaining 52 percent were apartments, townhouses, retirement village units, and flats, he said, adding across the rest of New Zealand, 74 percent of consented new homes were stand-alone houses.

In the year ended October 2018, a total of 32,925 new homes were consented in New Zealand, up 6.7 percent from the October 2017 year, statistics showed.

Auckland was the main driver of this increase, followed by the capital Wellington. The picture was mixed for other parts of the country, with the largest annual declines being in Canterbury and Bay of Plenty, Adair said.

Nationally, the number of new homes consented rose 1.5 percent in October 2018, reversing a 1.3-percent fall in September, according to Stats NZ.