Permanent arrivals from UK:

March 08 - 1063
March 09 - 1072

The expected flood of cashed up people from the UK is not happening

the main reason for lots of punters coming to NZ is to stay the min of 4 years to get residency and then bunk off to OZ

Permanent arrivals from UK last few months:

Nov 08 - 1906
Dec 08 - 2106
Jan 09 - 1977
Feb 09 - 1418
Mar 09 - 1072

(all data sourced from Tables at Stats NZ website)

New episode for one of my favourite programmes - "Mythbusters "
Episode XXXX - Busting the myth of a flood of UK migrants coming to NZ in the wake of the economic crisis
MYTH BUSTED

The wetdream of Tony Alexander and all his property mates is destroyed

(PS Andy - many of the students will be in hostels or in the oversupplied inner city apartment market so thier impact in terms of property will be very limtied indeed. Most of net gain is made up of increase in student numbers or fewer kiwis leaving for Aus. the figures don't back up AT ALL the notion that we will be flooded with permanent immigrants)

As expected the feb surge has run out of puff, a misely 313 where is the large increase like in 2002 thats going to boost the housing market then? Doesn't the theory say that in times of global crisis NZ has high immigration? Tony Alexander and co have been saying this, didn't he say we should easily get at least 15- 30,000 for the year? For this to come true we need 1200 to 2500 a month, the reality is its not going to happen 7,482 isn't even close. We will struggle to get 10,000.

Gosh you lot are sure putting the boot into Tony. He's only doing his bit to prop up the collapsing property market. How else can the banks cream off profits if they don't keep reeling in the mortgage fodder.
Won't it be a laugh if the economy is so utterly stuffed, the govt is unable to pork a turnaround in the property sector and has to let prices fall all the way back to the point where families can afford to buy and still have a few pannies left from their low incomes to blow on candy.

Whats happened to the pro-property buffs? they seem to be very quiet these days...

JJ - interesting observation

How does mainstream media get this view point
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/2350873/Migration-lift-for-housing

no matter how you try to obscure the facts, the nett migration gain is a reality, maybe not as white as some folks would like but still reality and in my experience Asians are far superior as tenants and people than poms will ever be, lets hope they dry up all together.

pressures building

Matt.. trouble is Spin is with those that can create it..

maybe we need to create a non-home owners association.. and have our own president release statements..

BTW.. I am willing to put in $100 to contribute to a full page add in national newspapers.. puting out accuracy to Tony Alexanders predictions..
Sure that woul dget some extra free press coverage

Matt

Immigration won't heat up until a) the riots start or b) next winter in the UK when they have rolling blackouts

Neven

We had 6617 permanent immigrants arrive in March 09, of which 1071 were on student visas

In March 08 we had 6338 permanent immigrants, of which 921 were on student visa

the very small increase in immigrants in March 09 compared to March 08 is mainly attributable to an increase in international students

Ray, good to see you are being your usual constructive and articulate self - Alex / Bernard - can you get rid of this idiot
I'm all for different opinion but this guy is offering no opinion only childish nuisance value
All he has to offer is "If only"

bernard - also it would be appreciated if you could write a piece for this wesbite or the herald on the real facts behind the migration figures

Ray good to see you have signed off under your true name "Idiot"

Matt

If there is a bright side to this myth of an immigration boom it is this....

- house sellers will believe the hype, the number of listings will surge as people think there will be all these cashed up immigrant buyers. The market will be flooded, with few buyers - further price decreases result

- policy makers will believe the hype and introduce policies to boost housing...again the market will be swamped

Gee I don't know why I was so concerned!!!! Let's perpetuate the myth!!!!!
Lets keep bringing in students, making immigration artificially high to fool people that we will have surging house demand!!!!

I nominate Philbest as president of the property realist assosiation (wasn't it his idea?) He can flood the media with press releases on why houses are over valued and prices still falling. I agree ANZ (and ASB) have a much more realistic veiw of the housing market. BNZ and Westpac are in a world of their own. It will drop even further this month and put another nail in the housing market coffin. Matt property buffs are clinging to the net migration myth because there is nothing else for them to cling to, wait untill August and it will be well and truely blown apart.

Dean,

It's clear to me that Tony Alexander is deserving of his own blog (which is far cheaper than the $100 you're willing to spend).

Take a look at this disgraced real estate 'economist' from the US- Davis Lereah:
http://davidlereahwatch.blogspot.com/

Bernard
Using Infoshare I found that of the 1063 immigrants from the UK in March 08 361 were Kiwi Citizens. Whilst for March 09 of the 1072 immigrants from the UK 385 were NZ citizens
almost identical between the two years
So lets spell that out again - 361 kiwis returned from the UK in March 08 compared to 385 in March 09
there is no flood of cashed up expats returning
Geogafree - thanks for that great blog. Mainstream media here are a joke, no one questions the views of the bank economists, when its obvious they have vested interests despite their pleas to the contrary. Its up to the rogues like Bernard to do that all by himself!!!!
good night

Kieran Said:

"...Tony Alexander and co have been saying this, didn't he say we should easily get at least 15- 30,000 for the year? For this to come true we need 1200 to 2500 a month, the reality is its not going to happen 7,482 isn't even close. We will struggle to get 10,000."

Kieran the seasonally adjusted figure was 1,720, as stated in the blog, i.e. right within your range of 1200 to 2500.

I am sure you don't need me to explain what seasonally adjusted figures are. Looks like Tony Alexander's predictions are looking good as usual.

Mozart,

I agree, I have been in the UK (in Manchester) for just over a year and for the most part the sky is hardly falling in here. I live in a fairly middle of the road suburb, and the one shop on the local high street I have seen shut in the last few months had the builders in within a few weeks to turn it into a new restaurant.

I work in civil engineering, and things have definitely changed: firms have gone from hiring site unseen to hiring freezes at most of the major firms. But there is still plenty of work to be done - businesses are still investing. I know several other New Zealanders over here and none have had problems staying in work.

And yes, the quality of housing over here is a lot better than NZ! For example, Manchester has an oversupply of inner-city apartments like Auckland, but the apartments here are substantially bigger, generally with carpark and have far better fittings than the Auckland CBD shoe-boxes. People actually want to live in the ones over here.

The effect on migration is more likely to be one of more New Zealnaders staying put, rather than a flood of poms or expats coming over, and that is what the March figures showed

Glenn,

Seasonal adjustment is a technique that attempts to remove the influences of predictable seasonal patterns from a monthly measurement.

For the data given above the actual migration was 313 and the seasonally adjusted number was 1720. This means that for a full year when March immigration is 313, you would expect the average monthly immigration to be 1720.

So in other words, it is expected that the March figure will be well below average for any given year. In the graph at the top of the page, you can see the annual variation with a local peak in the latter part of each year and a trough in the early part of each year. The seasonally adjusted figure is an attempt to 'iron out' these peaks and troughs to give you a better idea of what is actually going on.

I imagine this variation is partly due to the fact that if you are going to move from the southern to the northern hemisphere or vice versa you will move so you get two summers in a row instead of two winter. No one in the UK wants to move to NZ right now after going through a cold winter, and Kiwis are more likely to take off now to enjoy the european summer.

I don't know how it is actually calculated, no doubt via some computer software these days. I'm not a statistician, so maybe someone who is can give a better explanation!

Regarding your question about buying a house, if you have a reasonably secure job and a decent deposit (sounds like you do), I would definitely be having a good look now. No need to rush though. The March figures for immigration are high, but they are only one month

(Be prepared for a whole lot of people about to tell you to go hide in a cave for the next decade though!)

Good luck with whatever your decision is, sounds like you are pretty sensible with your money in any case.

8,500 permanent migrants from the UK in the last 5 months! That's a very impressive figure - they all use moving companies, buy or rent a house, use a lawyer, set up utility accounts and buy a car or two and their weekly groceries.

Oh and I see that mortgagee sales have plummetted in March compared with February down almost 20%. People must be enjoying refinancing at lower rates. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=1056... and http://www.realestate.co.nz/blog/mortgagee-properties-lose-some-of-their...

I suspect that there has been false reporting of mortgagee sales - double counting of them - they are all on realestate.co.nz or trademe.co.nz so taking a total from both sites when they are duplicated is not on. Addresses should be noted and more accuracy and care taken.

Mathew- As Bernard say's 'its hard to seasonally adjust human bodies' the actual figures are what really matter. You have correctly pointed out the fluctuations over the year and if you look closely you will see we get all our gains in summer and over winter we have net losses. To get over 20,000 the figures need to be the same as 2002/3 so far the gain is 9000 since sept08 compare this to 2002-03 when the gain was over 25,000 for the same period. It won't be hard to increase from last year when we only had 6000 we would have to go above the long term average of 12,000/year to give any boost to the housing market.
Glenn I would wait untill next spring/summer the market is always weak over winter and there is a very very high chance of more falls in values over winter. I wouldn't risk buying a house now that will be worth less in a years time. Even biased bank economists say prices have further to fall its just a matter of how much. Don't take advise from banks or real estate agents thats like asking a car salesmen if its a good time to buy a car of course they will say it is. Listen to people like Bernard Hickey, Gareth Morgan, Brian Gaynor.

The tourism 'slightly down' bit made me laugh. Overseas visitors are down 10% year on year. And that rate of decline appears to be rapidly increasing. An unprecedented fall for NZ tourism. Tourism to NZ is a lagging indicator as its a long haul destination so plans to come (from Europe/US etc) are made 12-6 months in advance typically. So we are only now starting to see some of the effects of the post October 2008 crash. I know many tourist operators here in Tasman are petrified of what happens in the next 12 months. 1 in 10 Kiwi jobs depend on tourism (190,000 or so) - along with the government in the past 10 years it has been one of the biggest job 'creators' in NZ. Not any more it ain't.

To put some bones on that - 25,000 fewer foreign tourists arrived in March compared to the equivalent year last year. On average most tourists spend about 2 weeks here and I gather the average total spend (accomodation, food etc) is of the order of $NZ2000.
That's at a minimum a cool $NZ50million out of the economy every month. Or $NZ600million a year (and climbing - I suspect by early next Summer visitor numbers will be down a minimum 15% on a y-o-y comparison - so by then we will be looking at a deficit of closer to NZ$1 billion compared to the previous year).
But like you say Bank manager - its of little consequence, tourism is 'just down a little'.

Perhaps you could inform the 15,000 odd people who have lost their jobs in the past 4 months or so whether they think there is a recession or not? And I rather suspect you've seen the last of the tax cuts - English and Key are signalling pretty clearly the ones in the pipeline will be cancelled. Fortunately external forces (S+P) have called time on that particular bit of engineering.

Bank Manager - you need to look beyond the crude figures
A significant % of those 8000 from the UK will be kiwis returning, not Poms moving here. And thats not a sudden flood of expats, just the usual cyclical reutrn of kiwis
The figures are based on the last country of residence, not citizenship

The seasonal adjustment measure is reasonably sound, but I would suggest that it is less accurate in an economic climate like we have now. The reason I say this is that March is adjusted upwards, given that it is typically a month where more kiwis leave for the northern hemisphere to move into their spring, and fewer poms arrive here. But remember this year fewer kiwis are leaving anyway, so I would suggest the figures have naturally adjusted somewhat themselves.

I still prefer to go off the crude figures which showed a gain of 300 for March. Of course if I go off the real figures I must acknowledge a gain of 3000 in Ferbruary, but a significant proportion of February's gain were students.

So for this calender year we are at about 4000 over 3 months, of which more than 1000 will be students

not a big slump but not much better than last year which was fairly low by historical standards

I would suggest that the annual number will fall between 10K - 15K, certainly not up to 30K like TA is suggesting

Word is that rates are on the rise all round the world.
Going up in Aus and we will follow.
What will that do to a property market already in decline?
Is this the year prices collapse 20%? Could be.

To The Bank Manager

Just for clarity the piece to which you link saying "Oh and I see that mortgagee sales have plummetted in March compared with February down almost 20%." - is not data on SALES - our website (realestate.co.nz) does not report sales, they are stats on listings on the website.

I capture this data on a weekly basis - and I share these with interest.co.nz who produce some great graphs - http://www.interest.co.nz/charts/gallery12-150.asp This data is no longer presented in these graphs as from trade me and realestate.co.nz - so there is no duplication. In addition I have audited each listing to make sure they are genuine mortgagee listings.

This data is fact, we host the listings of over 1,150 real estate offices, 111,000 listings representing over 95% of all listings in NZ - you are free to interpret it as you see fit. I see value in providing information to at least ensure people can engage in a debate with facts.

Matt : you are right, that we need to tease apart the over-all figure of immigration. Recall Michael Cullen lambasting the Nats, who had the temerity to point out that under a Labour Gumnut, record numbers of Kiwis were exiting to Oz. Cullen asserted that equal numbers of folk were coming in from overseas. Neatly neglecting to admit that many were non-English speaking refugees, whom the U.N. demanded we take. And Queen Helen meekly obliged.....Ooh, jog my memory someone, where is Queen Helen now ?

Matt : you ask where are the pro-property spruikers now. Man, do you not listen to Radio Pathetic in the afternoon ? No shortage of splendid chaps , in advertorial mode, wanting to allow you to buy in investment property on the Gold Coast. Or somewhere even better, a secret location that will be revealed to you if you call the 0800 number. Just $ 1000 down, and a rental agreement for 7 years.....How could you not want that !

Mozart : I remember a dramatic property boom in Sydney, in the late '80's. House prices across the city bolted 100 % in one 12 month period. The hang-over after the party saw the million dollar mansions hit hardest. And the rat-hole apartment boxes in the CBD crushed too. Average 3 bedroom stand-alone houses in the green leafy suburbs were not nearly so dramatically whip-sawed around. Think this concurs with what you report from the UK now.

I'm really looking forward to Tony Alexander's spin on immigration this Friday...

http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/6872/residents.jpg

I copied this interesting graph from the immigration website here:

http://www.immigration.govt.nz/NR/rdonlyres/1C333279-EFC2-4C87-9A76-CC65...

It shows monthly resident applications which I beleive is a much better indicator of housing demand than net migration because permanent residents are the ones who buy houses. Net PLT migration includes students, visitors and temporary workers who nearly always rent rather than buy. It shows a massive boom in 2002 & 2003 but there is no sign of anything similiar happening this year. Any increase in net migration is academic if it is mainly coming from temporary residents, renters aren't going to give any support to prices. Also I notice from Tony Alexanders weekly overveiws last year he was predicting house prices to fall 5-10% during 2008, to stabalize in 2009 then start increasing again in 2010 he has since changed his forecast for 2009 to the possibility of another 5% fall this year, it seems nearly all economists even the optimistic ones have downgraded their forecasts and most have no real idea what will happen 2010.

All we need now is the earthquake commissions ' big one', and NZ will have had the trifector.

Kieran - you should forward that info to TA
He's always very courteous and acknowledges emails (as long as they aren't abusive!!!)
He even mentioned my feedback to him on immigration in one of his reports a couple of weeks back

For those who continue to be interested in the immigration issue, there is an excellent piece on page 4 of ANZ's weekly commentary:

http://www.anz.co.nz/about/media/newslibrary.asp?ANZ_Market_Focus

The points they make are very similar to the points myself and a couple of others have made a week or two ago

You hear it all first at www.interest.co.nz!!!!

I continue to be impressed by ANZ's balanced commentaries.

He has predicted net migration to be 15,000-30,000 for the year which I guess means for the year end Dec09, as you say its a very wide range. For the year dec08 it was only 3814 so its definatly going to increase, how much who knows. Heres a table and graph of the monthly net figures. Jan09 started off below average but Feb/march have been above the 5 year average if that trend continues it could be around the 15,000 mark. But as I said in the last post any increase will only support the housing market if it correlates to increased permanent residents which isn't happening so far. I hope this swine flu thing turns out to be nothing but as Bank Manager says if it does end up being similiar to Mexico you can kiss goodbuy any increase in our net migration. It would have a devastating effect on our economomy not to mention human lives, for this reason I hope its not serious.
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