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Kiwi were chucked onto a wild house price rollercoaster in the wake of the first COVID-19 lockdown — but was this an exclusive ride for us, or have other countries been on the same ride?

Recently, I wrote a lengthy article listing the main things I am saying about the NZ residential property market at the moment – some of which I have been warning about for 12-18 months. Here are most of those points in summarised form.

I know from experience that accurately predicting house price movements over short periods of time is impossible. But one can balance the various factors in play and see what the trend seems to be and where it may be heading.

The world has been printing money for several years, in anticipation of inflation and interest rates eventually rising. Neither of those happened. But the short-term has changed.

I started writing this property-focussed column for Squirrel Mortgages back in June this year. If you’ve been reading it from then you'll still be surprised like I am that housing markets around the country are so strong, but not as surprised as those who haven't had the chance to read it.

It is now hard to believe that there could be more than a handful of people left in the country thinking the Covid-19 crisis will cause house prices to fall in New Zealand. So what's causing the demand? One thing mainly: the biggest net migration boom New Zealand has ever seen.

One of the strongest expectations most of us have had regarding the impact of fighting Covid-19 from early this year, has been that construction of houses will fall away. This expectation was soundly based but the chances of that are getting slimmer by the day.

This Wednesday, Treasury released their latest set of economic and fiscal forecasts, as legislation requires they do just ahead of a general election.

Back in March, as we headed into lockdown, most forecasts for our economy and housing market were decidedly on the pessimistic side. Things certainly have weakened off, but not by as badly as feared, and in some cases the post-lockdown spending surge has produced sales well above levels of a year earlier.

We now have data in hand showing that after an obvious collapse in real estate activity from late-March through to early-May, sales have since rebounded.

I recently talked about the factors providing support for the New Zealand housing market which included interest rates, a shortage of listings, and a long queue of frustrated buyers. One other factor that's just now getting more attention is the high number of Kiwis returning home.

There is a certain moralistic view which many analysts have of the housing market. It goes along the lines that people who make money from rising house prices are not as worthy as those who make money from working 40 hours a week, and one day they will get their comeuppance through house prices going back to where they were in some imagined glory days.