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Growing house construction is a substantial boom for the economy through extra business for materials manufacturers and distributors, architects, inspectors and so on.

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.

Some people retain a negative view on the housing market on the basis of an expectation that the economy is stuck in recession. Actually, the recession ended two months ago and there is little chance of it returning then morphing into a depression.

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.

One of the advantages which existing home owners have over first home buyers is experience. They have learnt that as a rule there is no “best” time to buy property and it is wise to simply get on with it as soon as one is comfortable with the debt to be taken on, and then manage changes along the way.

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.

Welcome everyone to the first of a new column I’ve commenced writing for Squirrel. Just in case you don’t know who I am, I used to be Chief Economist at the BNZ, and before that had a few years with Westpac in Sydney and Wellington. Late last year I went into business for myself and spend my time doing lots of writing, the occasional media interview, and making presentations.