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With investors backing off it is understandable that the pace of increase in house prices has slowed down. In the six months to September 2020, average house prices around New Zealand rose by just 4%, including a 3% fall over the April-May months.

I love property. Early last year I wrote that I thought we were going into the last great property boom based on ultra-low interest rates and the increasing importance of having a home in the post COVID world.

Now that we are experiencing lockdown again, can we expect the same things to happen in the residential real estate market and economy as last time? No. There are some key differences between this situation and that of March 2020.

The changing nature of the housing market has seen a rapid increase in the amount of terraced housing under development. Even experienced developers like terraced housing.

I continue to hear stories about investors selling off their properties in disgust at the government’s proposed tax changes. But are investors about to bail out of the market?

The cult of personality is alive and well in the New Zealand property market with the next wave of self-styled property gurus. Now they're digital savvy and on social media.

On March 23 the government surprised everyone with some draconian changes in the ability of property investors to deduct interest expenses when calculating their tax obligations. Will we really see big changes which could stop house prices rising for an extended period as the government would like? No.

This post will start with a little rant and then progress into trying to understand the downstream impacts of a big week for the housing market. Just in case you were under a rock this week, the government announced a major change in housing tax policy.

In this article I’m focusing on the idea of debt-to-income ratios. It is likely that they will be a key tool used by the Reserve Bank to meet its new house price stability objective.

We all know that the residential real estate markets all around New Zealand have been rampant since just after the middle of last year. We've been here before and none of the 'remedies' seem to have prevented prices from rising at pace.

It’s just a little bit odd at the moment trying to make sense of mortgage rates. The mortgage rate signals that borrowers are receiving are somewhat confusing.

In March the Reserve Bank will reimplement LVR (loan-to-value ratio) restrictions on property investors. This will mean lending for investment properties will be required to have a 70% or possibly 60% loan-to-value ratio.