The average house in New Zealand should be worth about 3.5 times the average household income. (3.5 * $48k = $168k)
The historic long-term rental return on most residential property was about 10%. Current rents for a typical 120m2, three bedroomed home in an average suburb is somewhere in the range of $12-16,000 pa…. ie the value should be about $120-160k.
But at present the average price for a house is about $340k. Spot the difference? Yeah … about $200k. And that is how much asset deflation is going to happen over the next few years.
There are about 2 million residences in New Zealand and if they deflate an average of $200k each, that is about… whoa… my crap old calculator just ran outta digits… but I’m guessing it’s about $400 billion. I’m going to make another wild assed guess and say that about 30% of that is mortgaged. That makes about $120 billion that has to be repaid to banks in cold hard cash, on assets that will be worth less than the outstanding loan. That is real actual money that is effectively being thrown down a gurgling drain, never to be recovered.
Our GDP is about $150 billion, and if we assume we take a 5%pa hit on GDP, say about $8 billion each year to repay this debt down, it will take 120/8 = 15 years to unwind this debt. Add on top of that the excess $50 billion of govt debt now being predicted… and you have some idea of how long this Depression is going to last.
You might also be able to make a wild stab at the only way out of this mess. (No it does not involve tax cuts…)
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