House prices have risen at nearly 10 times the pace of wages for typical first home buyers in Auckland over the last four years

Auckland is not viable for most nzers

You could say Parnell was not viable for most nzers, then as time and circumstances progressed it was Central Auckland, then all of Auckland. then Wellington and so on. Globalism and immigration will inevitably and markedly expand the range of desirable property locations. Stable government, peaceful society, property laws, ethnic infrastructure, English language, job opportunities, international airport, good weather and so on will all add up to increase prices. Of course you could limit immigration and foreign ownership but that would be counter to the current direction that the world is taking and will meet strong resistance. Already the most vocal opponents to this trend are generally deplatformed and deligitimized.

IMO I think the denial of the 'crisis', and not using the C word, is what is ultimately going to cost them the election. But time will tell, as Labours policies don't look that great IMO.

The reason Natonal wants to flood NZ with immigrants is to keep house prices up and wages down.
The property investors and the wealthy business people that support National will vote for them.
Also, most politicians have rental properties.
Up until now they have been very successful.

Thats my plan, get out of the city, buy a lifestyle block or little farm and work remotely.

Then you look at the hills surrounding it and wonder why they decided to put wind turbines up there?

I would not recommend Palmerston North. The weather is crap (see http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/88229139/Palmerston-North…) and eventually the combination of bad weather and boring christian zealots will make you want to top yourself (see https://e2nz.org/2015/12/16/john-cleese-shuns-palmerston-north-suicide-…).

Rather Hawkes Bay, Taranaki, Tauranga, somewhere where there is a beach.

A city really needs a certain critical mass in the first place, to be able to "take over deflected growth" from the nation's biggest cities. Is Palmerston North deliberately running a pro-growth regime or are things relatively nicely in balance now because it really isn't that popular a destination?

But economic realities count for a lot - there is a massive opportunity for any city in NZ with plenty of flat land around it, to adopt a deliberate strategy of "growth as an industry in itself", using the lessons of the very fast-growing and yet still-median-multiple-3 cities of southern and heartland USA. Businesses and residents can both be attracted by the same competitiveness in urban land costs.

I still find it hard to believe though that National had enough power to a) create a "super" city council out of multiple councils to achieve economies of scale (heh) and b) create quite different laws to deal with pressing housing needs in Christchurch, but yet couldn't manage to do anything to influence land supply in Auckland. Maybe they just weren't motivated enough to...after all, high prices were apparently a "good problem to have" and a "sign of our success".

Sadly all the high paying jobs (Medium to low income on a global scale) are in Auckland and Wellington.

Simple supply and demand. There's a logical reason why people want to live in Auckland. It's where the economic opportunity is. Those hoping Auckland will become affordable are living in fairy land. It's been a lot more expensive to live there in my whole working lifetime and much of that was pre immigration booms. You either accept that price or move elsewhere, which I see as a logical response for some professions.

You can also buy houses that cheap within that driving distance of Manhattan. But not Auckland. Spillover effects from absurdly distorted-supply cities are significant. But having freedoms to build housing in "rural" areas, is what helps in the New York region even if New York itself is "not cheap" (but its median multiple is nowhere near as high as Auckland's!).

Thats a quality line.

That fits with his line about immigration and us needing low skilled migrants because our young are druggies.

Hes selling us down the river.

The Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Act 2009 has been extended. Effect from 1 October 2018.

The extended rules will also apply to lawyers, real estate agents, conveyancers, high-value dealers and the NZ Racing Board. Collectively these businesses and accounting practices that provide services within the scope of the Act (whether or not they consist of members of professional bodies) are known as Phase 2 reporting entities.

The legislation:
• imposes a comprehensive set of reporting and compliance requirements on Phase 2 reporting entities;
• sets out a risk-based approach to tracking possible money laundering and terrorism financing activity; and
• details an enforcement regime for the supervision and monitoring of AML/CFT obligations including civil and criminal offences.

http://info.charteredaccountantsanz.com/rs/978-RJC-018/images/AML%20Inf…

..there has certainly been a drop off in the ppty bulls.

Because they are all too busy either in the dole queue or weeping into their cereal about their disappearing wealth.

Well they've simply changed their tune a bit DGZ.
Now they're willing to admit that Auckland's house prices have softened (falling).
But the RE's still claim that some how the market is going to magically bounce back in a short while??

And of course they don't even try to provide any evidence or even reasoning as to how the property market would start to sky rocket again under the current circumstances. Not that hard to spot them.

Agree with you, DGZ.

Most real estate agents tend to be right-wing, free-marketeers - so this blog would be well outside their comfort zone.

Most of the people who comment here are undoubtedly left-wing/socialist in their politics. Most support Labour: only a small minority support National.

How cunning of you

I don't expect the Kiwis to sell anything at a loss.

I fully expect NZ based Chinese who bought on behalf of rich Chinese to sell at a loss. They wouldn't really have a choice once the Chinese government starts twisting their arms. That's to put it lightly.

Chinese are also known to act in droves, and not afraid to sell at a loss once things start going south. Here's a recent example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%9316_Chinese_stock_market_turb…

I agree with you that we have a shortage of houses, but that goes back to my point - if only the people who can buy houses are the locals and basically need a mortgage from the bank, then it's not up to us to decide what the level is going to be. The market will speak for itself.

What's 20% decrease from the 2016 highs? Maybe around 8x household income? Hey, if the banks are okay to lend out that much then cool.

I'm still picking around 5x to 7x

Esprit ,You're right the people that brought high over the last 2 or 3 years won't sell at a loss, they probably won't sell for years because prices will be to low for them, they'll be out of the market, the people that brought houses over the last 2 or 3 years are a very small % of the total houses, the two sides that will be the buyer and the seller will be the buyer ONLY if they can afford it and the bank willing to lend it, and the seller who is the 100s of thousands of Aucklanders that over the last 2 to 3 years didn't sell but brought very cheap and will come onto the market for all the normal reasons that people sell, you need to understand the market dropping in price doesn't need the last small % of buyers to carry on , the market needs buyers and that % now is very small, and highly in need of affordability and 90% of Aucklands houses are owned by people that brought before 2013 and for cheap and that didn't play the market just recently , life Does go on

I was thinking about Dunedin as well when and if I have to move back from sunny Brisbane.. Nice city but the cold winter does my head in

That's just sad DGZ that you keep encouraging money launders to your neighborhood. Still thankfully they're few and far between so top end properties will deflate far more than the rest of Auckland. Have you check out the mortgagee listings latley? Quite a few in expensive areas.
It's the top end of the market that will feel the impact of the decline the most.

DGZ What are you on, a house like that is probably only 2 % of the houses in that area, plus very rear to be quarter off a acre, if I hear about someone eating 40 Big Macs I'll post that, just as interesting

Wow, that's a nice place. I guess there are about eight sections in that one property which would make them about 1.5M each. Seems about right.
Also CJ099 it's a bit off accusing every high end buyer of being a money launderer.

We are hitting that wall now, this is only the start, you get 2 sorts of corrections the big drops at the beginning then years of little drops and stagnation or little drops from the start for years then stagnation, the big drops at the beginning are people more so that brought on the high and took on to much risk and have to bail quickly and the little drops correction is those people hanging in so the market slowly goes down usually because the market went to far, to much dept so then the buyers disappeared in large amounts and generally start buying off the 90% of the people that weren't playing the market over the last boom, so because of that those sellers generally brought lower and can sell lower and sell now because of the more normal reasons like down sizing, moving because of a job etc etc, of course the election has put the market slightly on hold, but that doesn't change anything, overseas investors and immigrants with suitcases of cash is larger then this government will ever admit it and can't or they'll be shot, but over is over , locals tapping up there houses and buying all the cheap to middle priced housing and turning those houses into rentals with those ex owners leaving Auckland is over, although it did supply immigrant with rental property's which in a way helped the supply of rentals ,which no one seems to talk about, funny thing is that's all about to be reversed with FHBers buying back those rentals and cheap I would think, funny world . I guess you need to ask yourself is this going to be a little or large correction, nz got away lightly in 2008 with the GFC , we didn't have much to do with it, labour left us financially good, houses hadn't lifted that much, the RBNZ had done there job lifting interests rates slowly to 9% by 2008 giving a nice drop over the years after 2008, This correction we see, miles over the top house prices, record braking dept, interest rates left low so taking away the large help they give, affordability totally neglected by first time records, totally turning a blind eye to the stupidity a outside force can upset affordability with overseas investors and a stampede in valve, we may have broken every record ever or made our own GFC, ask yourself