Realestate.co.nz says property listings and asking prices surged in May; Inventories well below average in Auckland and Christchurch

Know a family that just secured a $50.00/week drop in rent - Wellington area.  If you're a good tenant and coming off a fixed term - just as with the bank if you have a mortgage - it pays to negotiate.

Not in Grey Lynn

I reckon most of the major cities in the OECD have city limits - and I bet most of them have higher housing density than Auckland.

I think the problem is that there are so many 1/4 arce sections near the CBD that should be appartment blocks, but instead are heritage zones, etc. Most of these houses that are selling for 1 or 2 million should actually be 20 appartments each selling for 400k

Or overseas investors and those emmigating to NZ should have to build their first house that they live in/invest in here.  This would help create jobs and keep housing stock numbers up.

In adelaide most building and planning permits combined will be no more than $200. Auckland's governance is a joke

Thanks Hugh. I have thought about a larger place with more debt but I prefer the comfort of knowing I have some leg room and can keep a roof over our heads. Bigger would be better, and don't blame people for jumping into larger properties at the current low rates but I don't like the worry and stress of more debt and the uncertainty of future interest rates. But that's just low risk stress free me. The current place is bigger than what I grew up in many years ago and that was perfectly fine.

Hugh, I was just trying to see if any of the real estate bulls would bite.

Lets face it, for 95% of NZ, if you haven't sold by now you have likely missed your best opportunity of the last two years.

I said of the March blip up in prices - wait three months. We have since then had April figures and they were down. May figures we haven't seen yet but I doubt sale prices (not asking) are going to look that good. Do we need to wait for June numbers?

Maybe not. In ten or twelve days we will probably know.   

Really?  An article written by people who think nominal returns matter - they don't!

When you buy, your mortgage does not increase with inflation!  If you have inflation, your rental yield will increase too, and of course the yield will bear some relationship to inflation (as interest rates will be related to inflation which will determine yields.

(Buy a $100k property with 4% inflation, 7% interest rates and a 7% yield - if prices rose 2% in nominal terms in a year you now have a 7.3% yield on a on the investment and a property worth $102k!  That is not bad, but the doomsayers will tell you that you lost 2%)

So... the truth of those figures is that in 25 of 36 countries, prices either rose or fell at a lesser rate than the previous year  -  which isn't exactly indicative of an accelerating decline!

And of those 11 who had accelerated declines -  Spain, Portugal, Poland, Greece, Bulgaria and Ireland made up over half.

Australia also make the list but they are in a different part of the cycle coming off a cyclical peak

I agree, Hugh, although I don't see Armageddon anytime soon. Let's keep things in some perspective. Nevertheless we are seeing clear signs of a global slowdown in economic activity affecting China, India, Europe, the USA and Australia. New Zealand will be taken along for the ride whether it likes it or not, and regardless of what the govt. does or doesn't do, or the howls of protest from the magical thinkers on the Left that it’s all the govt’s fault. Previously we have been able to rely on the strength of the Chinese economy to buffer us from the trials of the world’s economic woes, both directly and indirectly through Australia. But not this time. This time China is heading for a sharp slowdown, commodity prices have fallen, resource stocks on the OZ market have tanked as a result and Oz itself is descending into the toilet. The boom times there are well and truly over.

There are many interesting issues to consider out of all of this, particularly for investors and businesses, but for me one of those will be what will happen to house prices in Australia should it enter into a recession, and two, what will happen to our house prices as a result? We have had high real estate prices on low volumes for some time now, which is never a good sign for any market as that is often a prelude to a slump in market prices. The only thing operating in our favour from the residential point of view is the extreme shortage on the supply side, the recent sharp reduction in mortgage interest rates, and that as a country we still grow and export a lot of food. And that isn’t going to go out of fashion anytime soon.

OZ Dollar

http://www.theage.com.au/business/markets/dollar-is-headed-one-way-20120601-1zmbq.html

If you want to score the geographic locations (20 points for place number 1, 1 point for place 20) then:

Inner West  has positions 1,2,10,13,14 and 19.  67 points

North Shore 5,7,9,16 and 18.  50 Points

Inner and Central 3,4 and 11.  45 Points

Eastern Suburbs 6,8,12,15 and 20.  44 Points

So the Eastern Suburbs are actually the bottom of the tables!!  (Even if you move Parnell from Central to Eastern then it's still below the Inner West!

The pool is the entire backyard, no lawn so no good for young families hence no sale.

As a comparison a derelict bungalow in Dickens St Grey Lynn (owned by housing NZ) sold on Wednesday at $995,000.