Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today.
Auckland's largest real estate firm Barfoot & Thompson is reporting more sales of houses in the under $500,000 bracket, suggesting that banks may be starting to ease up a little on would-be buyers with low deposits. And Barfoot and Thompson's managing director Peter Thompson said with listings at low levels at the end of January, he was expecting more pressure on the city's house prices this year.
Statistics New Zealand has reported the unemployment rate fell to 6.0% in the December quarter from 6.2% in the September quarter, while there were 24,000 jobs added and labour costs rose 0.5% in the quarter. The participation rate moved up to 69.3% (68.9% seasonally-adjusted).
In the fast-developing saga involving the deteriorating relationship between Trade Me and real estate agents, the Commerce Commission has said it is investigating the decisions by groups of real estate agency offices in Hamilton and Hawkes Bay to withdraw more than 1,700 listings from Trade Me Property over the last three weeks.
The exchange rate has moved up strongly during the day, with the Kiwi dollar rising from early today to US82.49c (from US81.94c), to A92.40c (from A91.70c) and to 77.9 on the TWI from 77.36.
Swap rates have moved during the day about 4bps on two-to-five year rates and 5bps on seven and 10 years. The 90-day bank bill rates rose to 2.89% from 2.87%.
ANZ has also cut its credit card balance transfer rate today, matching the 1% rate earlier adopted by BNZ and Westpac.
Latest home loan approvals figures from the Reserve Bank for the week ended January 31 showed that the number approved, 6061, was down 4.3% on the comparable week a year ago - which is a slower rate of decline in numbers than has been present in other weeks following the October 1 introduction of LVR speed limits. Year-on-year comparative figures have often tended to be around 10% down since the LVR limits were introduced. The latest figures - while only one week - may suggest therefore that banks may be getting more comfortable with the limits and freeing up their lending a little.
General Finance has raised its term deposit rates for all terms 18 months to 5 years, raising them from 15 bps to 25 bps.
11 Comments
Weird connection! George P Mitchell part sponsored Dennis Meadows who was the husband of Donnella Meadows They wrote Limits to Growth. These people are heroes to Murray Grimwald/PDK.
I very much doubt that we are on the same page regarding woodlands, in fact not even the same book.
All woodlands really is is a spread out energy consuming suburbia. Some trees, greenery etc, it does nothing for minimlaising energy consumption, minimal envirnmental impact or being self sufficient...
I mean its very nice on one plain, but really la la land.
eg just how we differ, earthship.com V woodlands,
regards
Woodlands doesnt work in terms of the future, its make believe and it certainly isnt sustainable...
Earthship works, and whats more pretty much doesnt need water or sewerage connections so would save there on contributions costs, if the council(s) allowed it for those savings of course.
Woodlands does nothing for the environment except consume more of it per dwelling.
It is la la land if you think this is the future of eco-friendly living.
regards
You make and continue to make the mistake in belief that we can continue with BAU as provided by fossil fuels, we cannot.
So woodlands really still uses the same if not more fossil fuel as a "traditional" piece of US surburbia, let alone its bigger foot print, eco it isnt. The earthship on the other hand is far closer to how our future will be and consumes far lass resources. It is nothing like a cave btw but uses passive energy techniques (insulation, sun gain, air flow to temper the environment a family would live in.
regards
The traffic issue isn't a local government failure, it's a central government failure.
We have a transport funding body whose purpose is road-building. We need transport planning decentralised and given to a regional body whose purpose is to provide for the transport of goods and people, not the movement of cars. It's not at all surprising in a city of 1.4M people like auckland for instance, with dispiresed employment, that trying to cater for peak transport requirements with single-occupancy vehicles on roads is going to lead to congestion. Yet that's all the central government is willing to fund.
dtcarter I agree "the traffic issue isn't a local government failure, its a central government failure".
I also agree that the responsibilty and funding for transport should be decentralised but I would sugget the goals should be....
The twin objectives of maintaining mobility and housing affordability should drive the design, financing, and construction of trunk infrastructure.
Because the building of trunk infrastructure often requires the use of eminent domain, governments have a monopoly on its design and construction.
Here is a new simple job description for urban planners: plan the development of trunk infrastructure to maintain a steady supply of developable land for future development, but leave land and floor consumption per dwelling to the market.
Alain Bertaud former Head Planner World Bank P.3.
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