"Home loan affordability "
Well we have to give the stats a name..
With 3 Adult children, 2 with young families, from middle and high incomes....
The signs are its dropping..good
The amount..its still way off Actually being affordable.

Maybe renaming to "Home loan UNaffordability..." would be far more accurate.
After all the stats did start when unaffordability existed rather than several decades ago when is was affordable..

Just an off the cuff thought lol

Isn't it funny, that when house prices drop in the "Business Cycle" the economic conditions are always such, that the only ones that actually have any expendable income on hand to buy them, are those that miraculously, again, got out just before the previous Boom turned to Bust. The number of people in NZ, living in a house in which they do not have a financial interest is now over 50%, our residential housing stock is being concentrated in the ownership of fewer and fewer multiple property owning landlords. One of the very pillars of equal opportunity, is that if you labour hard enough, you will one-day eventually be able to buy your freedom, by way of being freehold, that pillar is said to no longer exist once the average house price exceeds the average wage by three times. How much does the average house price exceed the average wage in NZ, can anyone tell me?
cheers
Iain

Bernard
If you get this optimistic/ excited over a 0.9% drop in a month & 6.4% drop since the November peak I can't wait to see your reaction if we ever reach your 30% average price drop !!!

As Steptoe & I believe yourself have said, 40% or less is the target so 77% is still way too high.

Ian
I believe the last census said there were over 300,000 landlords in NZ, hardly a small minority.
In this land of equal opportunity, labour hard, invest smartly & you too can use your equity to generate more equity until one day you can sell one or 2 of your properties to pay off the others !!

Sharon
I believe you might have misread that Barfoots story- they were trading not investing - big difference.

Please Keith, don't tell me you are one of these people Here who can't wait to be the noble landowners, the figure stated of 66.9% in 2006, when they ask the question, they ask basically, do you have a financial interest in the property you are currently residing in, so if you were a multiple property owner sitting in your residence, you would put "yes", while those sitting in your properties put "no", so you can essentially take the private residences of the multiple property owners out of circulation also, which essentially further drops that figure, you say there are about 300,000 landlords in NZ, if you then take into account that we have about 1.4 million Residential Housing Stock, as RBNZ figures Here I would suggest, that that would suggest that homeownership it fast becoming concentrated in the hands a the few.
Cheers
Iain

Ahh Ian- not quite sure from that article, but I think I may already be one of the Nobles of which you speak.

Your figures match with mine - a mill or so houses owned by 300k landlords =average 3 houses each.
I still don't see 300k as a minority

Until very recent times, with the Australian Government taking back some influence over their Reserve Bank, which has in turn emboldened NZ Government to do the same, the Policy Targets Agreement has been nothing but a thing of ceremonial token gesture, and Allan Bollard far more the political master, than the political puppet, only right now with the consequences of excess "Created Credit" once again becoming all to obvious, the Bankers sure would like to have everyone think the current Labour Party Executive are fully responsible, but the truth is their only part was not being financially literate enough to stop them, and if we think we got it bad by puppet strings under Labour, you wait until they get back in the drivers seat under National.
Cheers
Iain

(1.4 mil houses less 300k landlords = 1.1 mil houses.)
(House size might be 150sqm but section size more like 500sq)

Don't think that foreign investors are the only ones to hold mulitple properties.
Your mates at RichMastery,( that have recently been given a hard time), have a philosophy of investors having 30 or so houses each, generating a few thousand a year net return each. Those that follow the philosophy are average Kiwis- not foreigners.

I can tell you that it is easy for the average home owner with some equity in their house to own multiple houses over a few years at relatively low cost. You don't have to be earning over 100k to do it.

If you look at the 50 billion loss at freddie and fannie and all the trouble that overseas banks are having rising capital its illogical to expect NZ to be immune. Easy credit created our housing bubble lack of it will destroy it. Interest rates will be too high for too long whatever the reserve bank does because of a shortage of funds available to lend.Also something else will become the next housing bubble and everyone will move on to the next bubble. Houses are too capital intensive and too dangerous and hard to finance at these prices

Providing interest free homeloans to all first homeowners would be a great part of spending our own money supply into circulation. Just as the State Housing Program was funded in 1938.
Cheers
Iain

Steptoe (Steps) - We did exactly what you outlined. Only we were not a young family. We were a young couple. We chose to put off having kids until we were financially comfortable. We chose to buy a 2 bedroom unit in a Manurewa 5 years ago as our first home. Took on a flatmate and paid back a bit of the mortgage then sold and brought a 3 bedroom place in Papatoetoe. Now we are in our late 20's and have a mortgage of $50K. My wife can have kids and not have to go back to work.

A lot of first home buyers seem to wake up one morning then decide to buy a house in Remuera or Kohimarama, then realise they spent too much money on flat screen tv's, cell phones, holidays and cars and then blame everyone else for their lack of planning.