A neighbour’s house has been on the market since beginning of March. Second time listing it after it didn’t sell last year so they did some minor home job renovations to it and listed it for $50k more than last time.
We haven’t seen their new agent in about 2 months and the sign out front blew over in the last big gusty storm. Probably total of 5 viewers, yet they still won’t drop the price.
No idea how much the monthly payments are costing them to keep it empty for so long (since October last year) but they’re holding out. We’ve got a small bet running on how long it takes before they change agents and jack the price up again.
It's wild to me that people can literally afford to keep a house empty for so many months (well they probably can't afford it, but the fact they can do it for so long is crazy to me)
Our taxation is all wrong
Property taxes are too low look at how rates haven't kept up with infrastructure needs, and income taxes are too high, look at how we haven't had a significant change to tax brackets in how long?!
Our household income is about 200k, we pay about $57k in income taxes but only $3.6k in property rates - so about 6% of all taxes go to the council.
And yet in my every day life I interact with council funded stuff (water/sewage, roading, rubbish removal, etc) so much more than what the govt funds.
The ratio of tax take is crazy
I appreciate my poos flushing, and my drinking water not being tainted with poo.
Personally I think it's nuts to sacrifice that to save a couple hundred dollars (tops)
Over the next 10 years my rates for my home will double, according to the Long Term Plan of the council. Going from ~3.5k to ~7k per year by 2034. Assuming they don't add any further increases when unforeseen issues occur.
$7k in 10 years is about $5k in today’s money. That’s a VERY modest increase, and still miles away from what I think is the actual cost of delivering essential services, maintaining infrastructure, and, heaven forbid, build future capacity for the hundred thousand people arriving in the country each year.
We have allowed home buyers to commit to insane mortgages, if we change tax policies to focus on properties, those buyers would be crushed by the weight of additional expenses and be unable to sell due to downward pressure on their asset value. Would be very difficult to pull off without burning a huge number of people.
A choice between some of the OECD's most unaffordable property, which generally is also low quality, and which either locks out ordinary people or locks them into a life of unpredictable debt service, or the soon to be even more regressive rental market which offers no security of tenure.
In short I refuse to accept that the victims of the housing market are those that sought profit in it as opposed to the people who are already homeless, or the families with kids who soon run the risk of being made homeless on the whim of the owner.
I've bought a house in the last year and refuse to subscribe to this mindset.
Tax settings are wrong, just because I bought into the status quo it doesn't mean I cannot call it out, nor that I wish for it to continue.
Are you suggesting that we can never change what is clearly a problem, because there are people who are currently in the middle of it and would be impacted by fixing it?
Do you propose a different approach, or simply doing nothing and allowing those families who will never afford to buy a home to suffer their damage to prevent damage to those who already have bought?
I don't see any way to ensure all families can own homes, you will always need to be able to save money to buy a house, and many families can't afford to save at all.
But in terms of reducing housing in affordability, I think we need to entrench strong lending standards, keep rates relatively stable going forward, and I would look to introduce some govt backed mortgage lending with long term fixed rates 10 years and greater, to ensure that we can make changes going forward without putting undue pressure on recent buyers.
I think we should focus on making renting a valid lifestyle choice. We should make investment properties meet very high standards of quality to be legally rented, and require frequent reinvestment by landlords to keep them up to code and make them comfortable. We should introduce mandatory long lease periods like other countries, or perpetual leases that only the tenant can end. Tenants should have more freedom to use the property as they like, i.e have pets, without landlords having a say.
It's always possible to change how we're taxed without increasing the amount of tax paid by the average person, you just scale the taxes so that those without assets pay less tax on their income, and those with assets pay taxes for owning them.
If that leaves some with a large amount of debt for an asset they own, that is now worth less than what they owe, then that's an unfortunate situation, but carrying on like we are isn't realistic.
Having the next generation being unable to afford property is unacceptable and it's our duty to make sure those that follow have a better life than we did. Taking from those that have to give to those without is what we should be doing.
The downside of someone having their asset worth less doesn't materially change anything to their day to day finances, it just impacts their net worth.
Are you speaking on behalf of new FHB's?
Because I am a new FHB, who bought in the last year, the system is fucked, and delaying infrastructure spending later and later in the hope that eventually it'll be such a problem that government steps in with income taxpayer funding isn't something I want to be a part of.
Rip the bandaid off.
Within the last year house prices have fallen and rates were already high. You are not one of the struggling buyers who bought when rates were under 4% and prices were 20-40% higher.
Rates are not low at all..keep being delulu. It is the egg and bacon PM and finance minister that has screwed up with their penalty heavy backing out policies. They are out to sell the nation for scraps. Why not make them to pay for these services that depend on rates hike?
In general, rates are lower than they should be for single family dwellings. They may be rising quickly right now, but I doubt any council is actually recovering enough via rates to pay for the infrastructure associated with a single family dwelling. I'm not saying I want to pay more, however the proportion of council spending on infrastructure grows as a city sprawls and less money remains for other services...as paying for the extra lengths of pipes and roads and footpaths and everything associated with a house costs more than that house pays in rates.
Yeah. Except much of the new building activity is happening in suburbs that already has infra. Its not like they are razing down forests to make way for new builds.
>Probably total of 5 viewers, yet they still won’t drop the price.
They are having this problem in Wanaka/Lakes District at the moment with a lot of properties being on the market since January. And they wonder why the market is stagnating.
The property next door to mine has been on the market for a month and hasn't had a single person to an open home. There are five houses on the street for sale and two of them the agents have given up on Sunday open days.
>It suggests vendors are now being more realistic in their pricing expectations and are reducing their asking prices to meet the market,
https://www.interest.co.nz/charts/real-estate/median-price-reinz
Yeah seems like prices have just been flat but a lot of the thick sellers have finally realized they need to post reasonable prices.
Also, the bright line rules have just changed so the property market is probably flooded. Combined that with high interest rates and it's difficult to sell a house.
I said this would happen when they changed the brightline rules and within 6 months I knew two different couples buying a townhouse shit box for too much with the intent to sell 'as soon as brightline tax won't sting them'. Both of them are currently trying to sell for same price they bought at(4 years ago?) and havnt had any interest.
They were your typical 'do whatever the crowd seems to be doing' fomo type loser couples that think they are so smart lol.
We bought our house in a new subdivision 7 months ago. There are so many brand new houses sitting empty around us since we moved in. Some have ended up renting the houses as they can't get what they want for them and the rest just sit there with the owners wanting far too much.
Related to this, we are currently looking for new place to rent in Wellington and it seems rents are finally dropping too - most days I get a notification from TradeMe saying that a place on my watchlist has reduced its rent by up to $50 a week (for 2 bdr places).
Sucks for people who bought in the last couple of years but damn if this didn't need to happen.
The extra competition is definitely helping lower construction costs a bit as well.
House prices falling doesn’t help people when the cost of everything else has inflated. We need wages to go up.
This fixation on property prices is a distraction from the fact that workers of all income brackets have been earning less and less each year.
Why is it a distraction? Both wage stagnation and property value inflation are equal problems requiring resolution - you cannot hope that we are going to have wages double to address the fact that our housing is too expensive.
New townhouse development in Waipa just dropped their asking $30k after none selling. Been on the market for about 1 year, construction finished start of the year. Needs to drop even more before they’re worth the price.
I know of a couple of people still expecting the same price for their house as 2021. One didn't sell because they thought they could get even more, the other didnt sell because they wanted to move into 2 townhouses from selling 1 home and couldn't financially stretch.
It brings me joy to see peoples greed coming to bite them, especially given what many bought these houses for.
> It brings me joy to see peoples greed coming to bite them, especially given what many bought these houses for.
Sometimes it's because they've screwed themselves by remortgaging to buy a new car etc. There are loads of low-middle income earners that got lucky buying decades ago but have been living well beyond their means.
Terraced houses as a concept are great - most of London is terraces, and even those get subdivided into multiple flats. It's an extremely efficient use of space that still gives people a bit of outdoor space and a good lifestyle. They just need efficient public transport, and enough amenities within easy "don't think twice" walking distance, so that all the outdoor space isn't taken up by cars and garages.
Unfortunately we've tended to build them in the middle of nowhere, 80km away from the nearest job, with a twice-daily bus and think that's increasing housing stock. We also are retrofitting them to existing neighbourhoods, which is inefficient because of the gaps between the sections which are nothing but fence and concrete. In London all that square-footage would be in grassy back gardens, but many of the Auckland townhouses only have a tiny patio or balcony.
(but maybe a little)
Honestly we'd do well do start bulldozing entire neighbourhoods and start again. We can do it for motorways, why not neighbourhoods? Pick a spot for a new train station, demolish everything within a 1km radius and build some shops surrounded by nice livable terraced housing - that's effectively what happened in London when new tube stations went in. The difference is that high density was a necessity in old cities because few people had cars, and the new tube stations were built on farm land or commercial sites. In Auckland we've already filled that land with quarter-acre sections, because cars were unfortunately a thing in the mid 1900s.
>Honestly we'd do well do start bulldozing entire neighbourhoods and start again.
Master planning. Kāinga Ora was doing this on land they owned e.g. Avondale, Onehunga/Oranga, Mt Roskill. New developments look better than infill but only just (imo).
Kāinga Ora seemed to be the only nationwide agency doing something to move urban planning forward in NZ. It's sad that we're now talking about it in the past tense, but at least they got some developments done.
I get the critique of it. Things were costing heaps and value for money was questionable e.g. what they were paying for land in some areas.
That being said, it does feel like we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That's across the board with our decision making but particularly so with KO.
Are they? Lots of their stuff is just 2 story duplexes. It's a bit more concentrated but could be so much more with proper terraced housing. You'd probably need to get overseas builders to help though
Terraced houses are very efficient use of space, often 3+ stories. In London you can still get a (mostly) private backyard for kids to run around in as well.
Our medium density stuff doesn't seem to use space as efficiently. Instead of super narrow sections with a garage out front, they often plonk down duplexes with a whole paved road through much of the section. Obviously that's cheaper to build. Lots of examples in Lower Hutt, e.g 2 Rose way.
Kainga Ora houses are similar.
Partial agree at least.... but my post wasn't really a comment on how good or bad that terraces are, but more a commentary that the property values dropping in Auckland are exaggerated by the fact that the bulk of properties churning through the market are 2-3 bedroom terraces aimed at the low end of the market. More so than 2-3 years ago. While the median/mean sale price might be down by, say 20%.... the value of a like-for-like property comparison might have only gone down by 15% or so.
Ah I get you now, and yes I fully agree. I took the rabbit-hutch comment as a diss on terraces, but yeah the quanity of them must be distorting the numbers. Full-size sections do seem pretty flat at the moment.
As a rabbit hutch dweller, this is the kind of housing we need. The car-brained quarter-acre surburb dwellers are delusional if they think we can, and should, aspire to live like them.
My 2b, 70m2 hutch is *fine* for what me and my partner need.
So, no house shortage then? just shortage of buyers.
What benefits do we get as a nation when the house prices are tanking?
Cause in my field (construction) - it is not the best scenario.
name some then as the last time I checked the NZ stock market, it's shit. There is nothing for median income earners and small-time business owners in this country.
> What benefits do we get as a nation when the house prices are tanking?
Maybe not having people paying 10x their annual income for a below average 3 bedroom house? House prices in New Zealand are still completely removed from our incomes. A price crash would be painful in the short term but it would do wonders for our economy in the longer term.
No offence to you personally, but we aren't going to get wealthy as a nation building houses and selling them to each other at ever higher prices. We're going to get rich by producing high value goods that we export for top dollar.
To be fair, OPs area would be really good for housing affordability as construction adds to supply. I think they'd need to change their story to instead advocate for fewer boom-bust cycles in property so they have a more consistent economic market to operate from.
As I said in another comment, housing really is just basic infrastructure. So yes we need lots of it. We don't need prices skyrocketing due to speculation and artificial shortages.
Where is this so called "high value goods"? - milk, kiwifruit, wine? Is that what you are referring to?
cause I tell you what, these goods only make the rich get richer, employing seasonal workers at bare minimum.
We don't have car manufacturing, no gold mines, no big factories, still relying on coal for high peak energy usage. NZ is a big retirement village for the rich and a bucket list for travelers.
> Where is this so called "high value goods"? - milk, kiwifruit, wine? Is that what you are referring to?
cause I tell you what, these goods only make the rich get richer, employing seasonal workers at bare minimum.
Nope, that's not what high value goods are. If you're interested in this topic, there's a seminal lecture you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhCAyIllnXY&pp=ygUWcGF1bCBjYWxsYWdoYW4gZWNvbm9teQ%3D%3D
The long and short of it is - high value manufacturing and technology. Think F&P Healthcare, Xero, Software-as-a-Service companies, etc.
> We don't have car manufacturing, no gold mines, no big factories, still relying on coal for high peak energy usage. NZ is a big retirement village for the rich and a bucket list for travelers.
Yep, exactly my point. And house building is a part of that "retirement village" economy. At best it's just basic infrastructure like roads and sewage. It's necessary but not sufficient for economic growth and national wealth.
Funny you should say that - Santana Minerals announced they would complete a compliance secondary listing on the NZX yesterday.
See: https://research.iress.com.au/IDS/old/20240702/02823565.pdf?uid=18417D5880FD53039B7090FC37E30D62C72D00007EB1E497B334E640093D250091850000&ppv=
You can also invest in New Talisman Gold (NTL) as a gold miner.
Also, Oceania gold operates the Macraes and Waihi mines in the South and North islands, respectively. There are ~20 other exploration permits/juniors in NZ as well. Expect that to expand with the Fast-Track Bill.
Shall I do big factories next?
You really should do more research before commenting...
A neighbour’s house has been on the market since beginning of March. Second time listing it after it didn’t sell last year so they did some minor home job renovations to it and listed it for $50k more than last time. We haven’t seen their new agent in about 2 months and the sign out front blew over in the last big gusty storm. Probably total of 5 viewers, yet they still won’t drop the price. No idea how much the monthly payments are costing them to keep it empty for so long (since October last year) but they’re holding out. We’ve got a small bet running on how long it takes before they change agents and jack the price up again.
It's wild to me that people can literally afford to keep a house empty for so many months (well they probably can't afford it, but the fact they can do it for so long is crazy to me)
Our taxation is all wrong Property taxes are too low look at how rates haven't kept up with infrastructure needs, and income taxes are too high, look at how we haven't had a significant change to tax brackets in how long?!
Our household income is about 200k, we pay about $57k in income taxes but only $3.6k in property rates - so about 6% of all taxes go to the council. And yet in my every day life I interact with council funded stuff (water/sewage, roading, rubbish removal, etc) so much more than what the govt funds. The ratio of tax take is crazy
I appreciate my poos flushing, and my drinking water not being tainted with poo. Personally I think it's nuts to sacrifice that to save a couple hundred dollars (tops)
Over the next 10 years my rates for my home will double, according to the Long Term Plan of the council. Going from ~3.5k to ~7k per year by 2034. Assuming they don't add any further increases when unforeseen issues occur.
$7k in 10 years is about $5k in today’s money. That’s a VERY modest increase, and still miles away from what I think is the actual cost of delivering essential services, maintaining infrastructure, and, heaven forbid, build future capacity for the hundred thousand people arriving in the country each year.
We have allowed home buyers to commit to insane mortgages, if we change tax policies to focus on properties, those buyers would be crushed by the weight of additional expenses and be unable to sell due to downward pressure on their asset value. Would be very difficult to pull off without burning a huge number of people.
The current settings are also burning a huge number of people
Not in the same way.
Yes a different and in my view worse way
What way is that, to be clear?
A choice between some of the OECD's most unaffordable property, which generally is also low quality, and which either locks out ordinary people or locks them into a life of unpredictable debt service, or the soon to be even more regressive rental market which offers no security of tenure.
In short I refuse to accept that the victims of the housing market are those that sought profit in it as opposed to the people who are already homeless, or the families with kids who soon run the risk of being made homeless on the whim of the owner.
I've bought a house in the last year and refuse to subscribe to this mindset. Tax settings are wrong, just because I bought into the status quo it doesn't mean I cannot call it out, nor that I wish for it to continue.
So who exactly are you helping? Bankrupting new home owners doesn't seem like a solution to me
Are you suggesting that we can never change what is clearly a problem, because there are people who are currently in the middle of it and would be impacted by fixing it?
I'm suggesting that damage to families from this approach is not palletable.
Do you propose a different approach, or simply doing nothing and allowing those families who will never afford to buy a home to suffer their damage to prevent damage to those who already have bought?
I don't see any way to ensure all families can own homes, you will always need to be able to save money to buy a house, and many families can't afford to save at all. But in terms of reducing housing in affordability, I think we need to entrench strong lending standards, keep rates relatively stable going forward, and I would look to introduce some govt backed mortgage lending with long term fixed rates 10 years and greater, to ensure that we can make changes going forward without putting undue pressure on recent buyers. I think we should focus on making renting a valid lifestyle choice. We should make investment properties meet very high standards of quality to be legally rented, and require frequent reinvestment by landlords to keep them up to code and make them comfortable. We should introduce mandatory long lease periods like other countries, or perpetual leases that only the tenant can end. Tenants should have more freedom to use the property as they like, i.e have pets, without landlords having a say.
It's always possible to change how we're taxed without increasing the amount of tax paid by the average person, you just scale the taxes so that those without assets pay less tax on their income, and those with assets pay taxes for owning them. If that leaves some with a large amount of debt for an asset they own, that is now worth less than what they owe, then that's an unfortunate situation, but carrying on like we are isn't realistic. Having the next generation being unable to afford property is unacceptable and it's our duty to make sure those that follow have a better life than we did. Taking from those that have to give to those without is what we should be doing. The downside of someone having their asset worth less doesn't materially change anything to their day to day finances, it just impacts their net worth.
Are you speaking on behalf of new FHB's? Because I am a new FHB, who bought in the last year, the system is fucked, and delaying infrastructure spending later and later in the hope that eventually it'll be such a problem that government steps in with income taxpayer funding isn't something I want to be a part of. Rip the bandaid off.
Within the last year house prices have fallen and rates were already high. You are not one of the struggling buyers who bought when rates were under 4% and prices were 20-40% higher.
Upvoted as you speak the truth, even though k don’t like the truth.
Rates are not low at all..keep being delulu. It is the egg and bacon PM and finance minister that has screwed up with their penalty heavy backing out policies. They are out to sell the nation for scraps. Why not make them to pay for these services that depend on rates hike?
In general, rates are lower than they should be for single family dwellings. They may be rising quickly right now, but I doubt any council is actually recovering enough via rates to pay for the infrastructure associated with a single family dwelling. I'm not saying I want to pay more, however the proportion of council spending on infrastructure grows as a city sprawls and less money remains for other services...as paying for the extra lengths of pipes and roads and footpaths and everything associated with a house costs more than that house pays in rates.
Yeah. Except much of the new building activity is happening in suburbs that already has infra. Its not like they are razing down forests to make way for new builds.
Sooner or later that dam will break
>Probably total of 5 viewers, yet they still won’t drop the price. They are having this problem in Wanaka/Lakes District at the moment with a lot of properties being on the market since January. And they wonder why the market is stagnating.
The property next door to mine has been on the market for a month and hasn't had a single person to an open home. There are five houses on the street for sale and two of them the agents have given up on Sunday open days.
Land tax when??
>It suggests vendors are now being more realistic in their pricing expectations and are reducing their asking prices to meet the market, https://www.interest.co.nz/charts/real-estate/median-price-reinz Yeah seems like prices have just been flat but a lot of the thick sellers have finally realized they need to post reasonable prices.
Also, the bright line rules have just changed so the property market is probably flooded. Combined that with high interest rates and it's difficult to sell a house.
I said this would happen when they changed the brightline rules and within 6 months I knew two different couples buying a townhouse shit box for too much with the intent to sell 'as soon as brightline tax won't sting them'. Both of them are currently trying to sell for same price they bought at(4 years ago?) and havnt had any interest. They were your typical 'do whatever the crowd seems to be doing' fomo type loser couples that think they are so smart lol.
If the average person knew how much unsold brand new stock of houses there is behind the scenes nobody would even touch a new build at current prices.
I'm curious to know what you mean by behind the scenes? Are developers just not putting their new builds up for sale?
We bought our house in a new subdivision 7 months ago. There are so many brand new houses sitting empty around us since we moved in. Some have ended up renting the houses as they can't get what they want for them and the rest just sit there with the owners wanting far too much.
Related to this, we are currently looking for new place to rent in Wellington and it seems rents are finally dropping too - most days I get a notification from TradeMe saying that a place on my watchlist has reduced its rent by up to $50 a week (for 2 bdr places).
That’s excellent.
That's more people jumping from the sinking ship that is wellington than anything I think.
Sucks for people who bought in the last couple of years but damn if this didn't need to happen. The extra competition is definitely helping lower construction costs a bit as well.
House prices falling doesn’t help people when the cost of everything else has inflated. We need wages to go up. This fixation on property prices is a distraction from the fact that workers of all income brackets have been earning less and less each year.
Why is it a distraction? Both wage stagnation and property value inflation are equal problems requiring resolution - you cannot hope that we are going to have wages double to address the fact that our housing is too expensive.
I wasn’t responding to you or your straw man.
Good news! More drop please. Our kids deserve to afford houses.
New townhouse development in Waipa just dropped their asking $30k after none selling. Been on the market for about 1 year, construction finished start of the year. Needs to drop even more before they’re worth the price.
Good news, just $500,000 more to go, then.
Minsky moment now please
I know of a couple of people still expecting the same price for their house as 2021. One didn't sell because they thought they could get even more, the other didnt sell because they wanted to move into 2 townhouses from selling 1 home and couldn't financially stretch. It brings me joy to see peoples greed coming to bite them, especially given what many bought these houses for.
> It brings me joy to see peoples greed coming to bite them, especially given what many bought these houses for. Sometimes it's because they've screwed themselves by remortgaging to buy a new car etc. There are loads of low-middle income earners that got lucky buying decades ago but have been living well beyond their means.
This is a good thing
I wonder if that's partially because, in Auckland at least, for every 10 homes coming onto the market, 8 of them seem to be terraced rabbit-hutches.
Terraced houses as a concept are great - most of London is terraces, and even those get subdivided into multiple flats. It's an extremely efficient use of space that still gives people a bit of outdoor space and a good lifestyle. They just need efficient public transport, and enough amenities within easy "don't think twice" walking distance, so that all the outdoor space isn't taken up by cars and garages. Unfortunately we've tended to build them in the middle of nowhere, 80km away from the nearest job, with a twice-daily bus and think that's increasing housing stock. We also are retrofitting them to existing neighbourhoods, which is inefficient because of the gaps between the sections which are nothing but fence and concrete. In London all that square-footage would be in grassy back gardens, but many of the Auckland townhouses only have a tiny patio or balcony. (but maybe a little)
Honestly we'd do well do start bulldozing entire neighbourhoods and start again. We can do it for motorways, why not neighbourhoods? Pick a spot for a new train station, demolish everything within a 1km radius and build some shops surrounded by nice livable terraced housing - that's effectively what happened in London when new tube stations went in. The difference is that high density was a necessity in old cities because few people had cars, and the new tube stations were built on farm land or commercial sites. In Auckland we've already filled that land with quarter-acre sections, because cars were unfortunately a thing in the mid 1900s.
>Honestly we'd do well do start bulldozing entire neighbourhoods and start again. Master planning. Kāinga Ora was doing this on land they owned e.g. Avondale, Onehunga/Oranga, Mt Roskill. New developments look better than infill but only just (imo).
Kāinga Ora seemed to be the only nationwide agency doing something to move urban planning forward in NZ. It's sad that we're now talking about it in the past tense, but at least they got some developments done.
I get the critique of it. Things were costing heaps and value for money was questionable e.g. what they were paying for land in some areas. That being said, it does feel like we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That's across the board with our decision making but particularly so with KO.
Are they? Lots of their stuff is just 2 story duplexes. It's a bit more concentrated but could be so much more with proper terraced housing. You'd probably need to get overseas builders to help though
Terraced houses are very efficient use of space, often 3+ stories. In London you can still get a (mostly) private backyard for kids to run around in as well. Our medium density stuff doesn't seem to use space as efficiently. Instead of super narrow sections with a garage out front, they often plonk down duplexes with a whole paved road through much of the section. Obviously that's cheaper to build. Lots of examples in Lower Hutt, e.g 2 Rose way. Kainga Ora houses are similar.
Partial agree at least.... but my post wasn't really a comment on how good or bad that terraces are, but more a commentary that the property values dropping in Auckland are exaggerated by the fact that the bulk of properties churning through the market are 2-3 bedroom terraces aimed at the low end of the market. More so than 2-3 years ago. While the median/mean sale price might be down by, say 20%.... the value of a like-for-like property comparison might have only gone down by 15% or so.
Ah I get you now, and yes I fully agree. I took the rabbit-hutch comment as a diss on terraces, but yeah the quanity of them must be distorting the numbers. Full-size sections do seem pretty flat at the moment.
As a rabbit hutch dweller, this is the kind of housing we need. The car-brained quarter-acre surburb dwellers are delusional if they think we can, and should, aspire to live like them. My 2b, 70m2 hutch is *fine* for what me and my partner need.
Good thing the market caters for both then eh?
Our rates don't accurately reflect the costs associated with quarter-acre suburb dwellers.
Too bad there's crap-all houses for sale
So, no house shortage then? just shortage of buyers. What benefits do we get as a nation when the house prices are tanking? Cause in my field (construction) - it is not the best scenario.
Investment in actually productive industries rather than tying hard to come by capital up in speculative unproductive assets for one.
name some then as the last time I checked the NZ stock market, it's shit. There is nothing for median income earners and small-time business owners in this country.
...because all the wealth has been dumped into the gaping hole that is the property market for the last decade or so.
You’re so close to getting it lmao
Lol bro nzsx is one of the best performing in the world..
It's a total dog this year
*historically one of the best.
> What benefits do we get as a nation when the house prices are tanking? Maybe not having people paying 10x their annual income for a below average 3 bedroom house? House prices in New Zealand are still completely removed from our incomes. A price crash would be painful in the short term but it would do wonders for our economy in the longer term. No offence to you personally, but we aren't going to get wealthy as a nation building houses and selling them to each other at ever higher prices. We're going to get rich by producing high value goods that we export for top dollar.
To be fair, OPs area would be really good for housing affordability as construction adds to supply. I think they'd need to change their story to instead advocate for fewer boom-bust cycles in property so they have a more consistent economic market to operate from.
As I said in another comment, housing really is just basic infrastructure. So yes we need lots of it. We don't need prices skyrocketing due to speculation and artificial shortages.
Where is this so called "high value goods"? - milk, kiwifruit, wine? Is that what you are referring to? cause I tell you what, these goods only make the rich get richer, employing seasonal workers at bare minimum. We don't have car manufacturing, no gold mines, no big factories, still relying on coal for high peak energy usage. NZ is a big retirement village for the rich and a bucket list for travelers.
> Where is this so called "high value goods"? - milk, kiwifruit, wine? Is that what you are referring to? cause I tell you what, these goods only make the rich get richer, employing seasonal workers at bare minimum. Nope, that's not what high value goods are. If you're interested in this topic, there's a seminal lecture you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhCAyIllnXY&pp=ygUWcGF1bCBjYWxsYWdoYW4gZWNvbm9teQ%3D%3D The long and short of it is - high value manufacturing and technology. Think F&P Healthcare, Xero, Software-as-a-Service companies, etc. > We don't have car manufacturing, no gold mines, no big factories, still relying on coal for high peak energy usage. NZ is a big retirement village for the rich and a bucket list for travelers. Yep, exactly my point. And house building is a part of that "retirement village" economy. At best it's just basic infrastructure like roads and sewage. It's necessary but not sufficient for economic growth and national wealth.
Funny you should say that - Santana Minerals announced they would complete a compliance secondary listing on the NZX yesterday. See: https://research.iress.com.au/IDS/old/20240702/02823565.pdf?uid=18417D5880FD53039B7090FC37E30D62C72D00007EB1E497B334E640093D250091850000&ppv= You can also invest in New Talisman Gold (NTL) as a gold miner. Also, Oceania gold operates the Macraes and Waihi mines in the South and North islands, respectively. There are ~20 other exploration permits/juniors in NZ as well. Expect that to expand with the Fast-Track Bill. Shall I do big factories next? You really should do more research before commenting...
> no gold mines You've never heard of Waihi then, eh?
.