RSS Feed

NZ named as world's 5th fastest growing property market

Wednesday September 16th, 2015

New Zealand has the world's fifth fastest rising house prices.

The Knight Frank Global House Price Index released today ranked the country only behind Hong Kong, Turkey, Estonia and Luxembourg for annual house price rises.

New Zealand house prices were listed as rising 10.9 per cent annually, well below Hong Kong's 20.7 per cent rise.

New Zealand also ranked ahead of Hungary, Norway, Mexico, India, Indonesia, Germany, Denmark and South Africa where prices have also risen steeply lately.

The index tracked house price changes in 56 "mainstream residential markets" and said Hong Kong continued to defy policymakers' cooling measures due to its prices up 20.7 per cent year-on-year.

Knight Frank Global House Price Index

Rank Country 12-month change
1 Hong Kong* 20.7%
2 Turkey 18.5%
3 Estonia 13.4%
4 Luxembourg 13.2%
5 New Zealand 10.9%
6 Ireland 10.7%
7 Sweden 8.8%
8 Iceland 7.8%
9 Colombia 7.2%
10 Australia 6.9%

[Source: Knight Frank Global House Price Index]

NZ property prices set to increase further with drop in the official cash rate

Thursday July 23rd, 2015

The Reserve Bank's decision to cut its key interest rate again will push up property prices, the real estate institute says.

A softening economic outlook and low inflation prompted the central bank to lower the official cash rate to 3.0 per cent on Thursday morning, which has already seen floating mortgage rates fall.

Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler said more cuts were on the cards after the 25-basis point move, and a weaker dollar was needed.

Real Estate Institute of New Zealand chief executive Colleen Milne said the interest rate cut would lead to higher property prices.

The most important consideration for property markets was in terms of interest rates and the extent of further reductions during the next few months.

"In the short term lower interest rates would tend to put upward pressure on prices – particularly in Auckland, and perhaps also in regions where recent feedback suggests there has been some involvement from Auckland-based investors," Milne said.

Wheeler said house prices in Auckland continued to increase rapidly, but otherwise house price inflation generally remained low. Although increased building work was underway in Auckland, it would take some time for the imbalances in the market to corrected, he said.

Source: Stuff.co.nz

New Zealand's Rock Star economy

Thursday June 25th, 2015

The economist who first said New Zealand was a "rock-star economy" thinks it still has star status.

HSBC's Paul Bloxham also believes that talk of Auckland's housing market being at crisis point is wrong.

He stated this morning that New Zealand is still outperforming most of the developed world. Growth is running at 3 percent per annum.

"We think 2015 has been an encore for the rock-star story."

He made the point that what is happening in the Auckland property market is not unique to New Zealand. It is similar to what is going on in places like London.

"Demand is strong for housing and supply has been weaker than it should be, so house prices are rising very strongly in Auckland.

"They are probably running a little bit faster than they should in a sustainable sense, but that rise in house prices is benefiting most of the population of Auckland. Most of the people are owners of property, and of course those people are benefiting from rising house prices.

"This is not something that is unique to Auckland either. It is not just happening in New Zealand. It is happening in all of the major cities in the world. It is happening in Sydney, it is happening in New York, it is happening in Hong Kong, it is happening in London. It is not a consequence of something that is just specific to New Zealand.

Source: TV3

Chinese investment set to boom

Thursday June 25th, 2015

The floodgates are set to open for Chinese buyers to pour US$10.9 billion into New Zealand real estate as restrictions on privately held capital are eased, according to a new report.

The report from a leading real estate listings website, with 2.5 million properties and businesses for sale, studied the effects of the Chinese government's second phase of its Qualified Domestic Individual Investor (QDII2) programme to allow its citizens to buy overseas property.

Rich Chinese are drawn to New Zealand.

The pilot program will enable US$11 billion of new Chinese money to flow into New Zealand's real estate market. That's based on wealthy Chinese investing 10 per cent of their assets into international property, including commercial. It's also based on NZ getting about 3.3 per cent of that property-specific investment, as it has in the past," he said.

Source: NZ Herald

Pressure for smaller apartments in Auckland

Wednesday June 24th, 2015

Pressure is growing on our major cities' councils to relax rules on how small apartments can be.

It's one idea being floated to help ease the demand for accommodation in Auckland.

Martin Dunn has been selling apartments in Auckland for nearly two decades.

"Since we started the apartment market, we've gone from 226 apartments to 26,000."

As house prices soar, people are increasingly looking up.

"Something like 30 percent to 35 percent of our building consents are now apartment building consents," says Auckland Mayor Len Brown.

In 2007, the council brought in minimum size guidelines for inner-city apartments. But a report by the Productivity Commission questions their effectiveness.

"In a number of areas councils are applying restraints on exactly what can be built and how it can be built, and many of those constraints don't seem to meet a fairly standard cost-benefit analysis," says the Productivity Commission's Murray Sherwin.

At the moment, Auckland Council rules mean inner-city apartments have to be at least the size of 35 square metres. But, under the proposed Auckland Council Unitary Plan, that could be decreased to the size of 30 square metres.

Some people think you can go even smaller, so we put it to the people of Auckland – most thought they were just too small.

Mr Dunn says 35 square metres for a studio is "generous", and thinks they could go smaller.

"If the council would allow us to produce 20-square-metre studios, we could provide those at around $200,000."

It's attractive as first homes for singles and young couples, except some banks won't even lend to you if it's less than 40m squared.

The city's mayor doesn't want to go smaller than 30 square metres anyway.

"No, I think that we've arrived at the right point that Auckland is comfortable with," says Mr Brown.

But if the demand for housing continues to outstrip the supply, Auckland's officials may have to revisit their stance.

Source: 3 News

<< Newer articles | Page 4 of 10 | Older articles >>

FREE PROPERTY ASSESSMENT
© 2018 Australian Property Solutions. All rights reserved. | Agents login
The content of this website has been prepared by Australian Property Solutions. The information including all materials, estimates, calculations, opinions or recommendations contained herein is sourced externally, and presented as illustrative and general marketing comment only. No warranty is made as to the accuracy or reliability of any information contained in this document and neither Australian Property Solutions nor any third parties involved in the preparation of this document accept any form of liability for its content. Australian property Solutions recommends all Investors consult with appropriate professional advisers when considering any property purchase.