The Stuff and Herald websites are infested with property porn these days. “How this 18 year old bought 3 Auckland houses” (with just a small gift of $1 million from her parents). That sort of thing. People must click on this nonsense or there wouldn’t be so much of it. Bread and circuses, but what it really does is show how rare it is for any young person to buy a house these days – effectively impossible without significant help of some kind.
So anyway, bravo Liam Dann for providing a dose of reality:
Young house hunters should just give up
Last week’s property statistics were horrible for anyone hoping to get on the property ladder in Auckland.
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If you convert that 12.3 per cent rise into dollars (which, unfortunately, is what we have to pay for things with) the average value of a house in the Auckland region rose by $114,000 in the past 12 months.I’m not sure how many flat whites that is, but if I was young and contemplating the Auckland housing market I’d waste my money on something a bit stronger.
Normal people should probably just give up. If you are on any kind of regular wage then scrimping and saving to buy a house is futile.
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Based on the case studies we’ve seen in the media in the past few weeks some young people are so desperate to own a home they are gearing every aspect of their life towards it. They are effectively learning to become property investors in order to get into the market. This is a terrible way to resolve the housing crisis. The last thing New Zealand needs is more property investors.To quote Dr Oliver Hartwich from economic think tank The New Zealand Initiative: “Booming property markets create a mirage of wealth, not wealth itself.” That’s not a lefty liberal, millennial view. That’s the view of most economic and financial market experts in this country.
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The next Government, regardless of which party forms it, needs to confront housing inequality. Otherwise New Zealand will eventually have its own Brexit or Donald Trump-style backlash. …
Yup.
Read that in conjunction with a couple of background pieces, NZ ‘half a million houses’ short, and Auckland needs to double number of new homes – data, (and Bernard Hickey’s 2009 open letter to younger generations is also well worth a re-read).
If only we had a government that could build some bloody houses!
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