Prices at the bottom end of Auckland's housing market increased $85,000 in October making home ownership the preserve of the highly paid

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House prices have risen (rapidly) on the back of crazy irresponsibly low OCR settings. Simple as that. OCR needs to be on a rapid path to normalisation.

Are house prices rising or are real wages collapsing？

The purchasing power of any cash savings and incomes has collapsed. That's what happens when the banks can create credit at a rate far greater than the rate of income growth.  

Most peoples wages still buy all of the things they used to except for housing. 

Absolutely correct and at today’s interest rates you will pay another $1 million in interest - so that’s 50k a year for 20 years to buy a 3 and 1 house 

Because that is what a prison is a place you cannot choose who to live with, are at risk of sexual and physical assaults daily and have limited access to an accessible bathroom so poor to no toileting facilities. Many disabled people died under the age of 40 because of what you suggest, some were just so traumatized and physically abused they were driven insane or denied any access to communicate. What a strange fantasy you have to relive those days.

Also in case you did not realise most of those disabled on a benefit lose any income support if they are forced to live with someone else. It often does not even need to be a relationship as close as a friend. Many disabled people have had their income cut for having flatmates or borders. If you think that the ability to afford or to be able to pay for or the ability to have visiting carer support for a disabled person does not factor into room rental decisions then that would be a moronic position. It is akin to saying that disabled people should be happy to have food prep and bathing access removed and be glad they are not put into pine boxes instead.

18 years of Clark & Key governments & 4 of this lot equals 22 years of sustained escalation in property value. Coming up to a quarter of a century. So it can only be concluded that all these governments have wilfully, deliberately  indulged  themselves in policies to create said escalation. Perhaps the end game then is the wealth tax sponsored by the Greens? Sure has formulated a huge collective target as catchment hasn’t it.

They are each as bad as the other, in different ways.

Yeah I rented in Bondi for 7 years and was able to save a whole lot more and had a great time as well. 

Yet looking at suburb profiles on domain.com.au shows median houses prices of $2M - $3M or more within 20km of Sydney CBD

I know someone that sold his house in 2015 as needed the money to support cashflow for his business that provides an actual service. What an idiot.

Thank you for your polite answer, after what I wrote you should have hit me with a hard stick instead ;)

Cynicism missed you did. 

Frazz

I'm a white, pale, stale, old babyboomer but stop trying to put the blame on us for everything the disaffected find distasteful.  If you wish to assign the blame correctly you should direct it at the Key government where all sorts of immigration schemes and scams flourished and were actively encouraged....many so-called immigration consultants were ex-MPs or had ties to MPS.  The one scheme which I had privy to when I was selling my own business was that a Chinese immigrant would borrow enough money off these consultants and their Chinese liaison partners to buy any old business so they could become NZ immigrants under the 'business category'; they would have to then pay the loan back with interest.  Inotherwords, they weren't bringing new money into NZ, but sooner rather than later they would be buying a house.

But I'm also aware that a lot lot of younger babyboomers than myself have been attempting to undermind Ardern's handling of the pandemic.  For god's sake the Australian right wing think tank,The Lowy Institute, has released a report into the pandemic which lists NZ as number one in the world for the best handling of the pandemic.  A lot of shameful criticism has been directed at Ardern purely because she's a woman and these white, pale, stale commentators (Prebble, Joyce, Taylor, et al) find it difficult to countenance being governed by a woman. We witnessed National's debacles where a man (Bridges, Muller,etc) flopped spectacularly. We have witnessed what the opposition tright wing parties have to offer and it's nothing;  There's even a new right-wing party on the block in the form of a Social Credit avatar that recently placed a full-page advertisement in the Herald; things are so desperate the right has had to scrape the bottom of the barrel and reintroduce 'the walking dead'.

Finally, Austria, facing yet another surge of Covid has said bugger it to all the anti-vaxxers and introduced compulsory vaccination. Good on them.

Well Muldoon sure had his cronies. Cushing, Trotter, Fletcher, Davis, Myers, and even Jones sort of for a while, and on. Don’t believe before that Kirk was subjected to any such influencers but possibly Holyoake had a receptive ear tuned to the right frequency? But I would  suggest Muldoon’s prime ministership was the incubator for the “lobbying” of today.

Don't disagree Rastus, but why would ACT NZF or TOP be any different? A big part of the problem is the quality of choice.

We need something very different today. People not bound by "conventional wisdom". People willing to challenge that wisdom, and try something very different, but they would have to have very high levels of integrity too, as the temptation would be huge! 

While eating avocado, no less!

Strangely enough those 1 bedroom apartments leasehold or any freehold in the city (awaiting remediation) is selling for substantially less than CV... Could be the hundreds of thousands of hidden costs. However the govt is trying to push young couples into thinking that apartment living in high risk low quality buildings at risk of severe remediation issues and high annual rents is exactly what they need.

Unemployment was also high because it only took one wage to afford a home. Hence, more often than not, one half of a couple did not need to support the mortgage payments.

Exactly. According to the chat above, saving for a 10% deposit takes at least 2-3 years in the cheaper parts of the country. I don't think there is any time in the last two decades when you would have been better off waiting the extra 2+ years til you had a 20% deposit. In some cases you would have been hundreds of thousands of dollars (or even half a million) better off had you bought as soon as you possibly could rather than wait til you had a bigger deposit. And in those decades there have been many, many instances where 'experts' have predicted house price drops that not only didn't eventuate but were instead double digit rises. So for their entire adult lives, the smart thing to do has been to ignore predicted house price drops and buy the most expensive house you can as soon as you can. 

Half an avo on two slices of dollar wholemeal loaf = breakfast's on the house?

Demand must have dried up from millennials saving that extra 85k a month they need just to stay where they were. Who knew it was possible to eat that much avo. 

Definitely good idea. Actually NZ engineering in general is low wage and low quality lifestyle across the engineering specializations but especially mechanical, electrical, software, environmental, biomedical etc especially in comparison to countries like Aus, the UK, the US, many countries in Asia. A trip across the ditch can actually double the wage and provide high quality affordable housing within the first 2-3years (better education and support benefits too if they can become citizens). In addition the career opportunities are far better and the additional on the job training is much better (plus access to higher quality conferences and research opportunities). However the key is ensuring that family can follow them because like covid has shown returning or getting the childcare benefits of relatives so both parents can work full time is far more limited when the borders are closed. I guess they could sacrifice more for young infant and toddler childcare (also more affordable overseas) or they could just have older family with them for a couple years also to benefit from the improved living conditions and often better quality housing.

Other fields that should leave NZ immediately anything in the medical or other tech sectors, teaching and education, trades, agriculture, sports etc. Mostly just leaving NZ with property investors, financiers, bureaucrats, the serfs who serve them and those too stuck in this country already they cannot leave (like those who would struggle to get visas, those with family to care for, or those who could not get decent jobs overseas). 

I do live in Auckland HM and yes I love it

At least there was a record number of FHB's who were able to enter the market at the low interest rate points.  It gave them a chance to get in.  Now?  with all these DTI tools, sudden interest rate hikes, how is a FHB ever going to buy?  

Oh there will always be advantages to using investment equity and rental income of a portfolio above anyone buying with intentions to actually live in a home. It is not like they are blocking the use of equity and interest only loans in housing purchases.