Is it really comparable with the bay area? A quick scan suggests that the most expensive city in NZ (Auckland) sits at around NZ$1 million. Compare that to US$1.3 million for San Francisco. The rest of NZ is substantially cheaper, the second city Wellington for example is NZ$0.7 million.

Median wages appear to be about NZ$50k (all NZ) vs US$75k (San Fran). So on both absolute price and price vs income, only Auckland appears to be in the same ballpark as San Francisco.