Hard News: Behind those Herald home-buying stories
139 Responses
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
I’m pretty sure that most first home buyers will be aiming closer to the lower quartile (or even lower 10%)
As an example, Glen, this fine specimen filters out of TradeMe's results when the maximum price is the extravagant sum of $500k. That won't even be the bottom 10%, which will be occupied by single-bedroom apartments and leasehold townhouses, and the house is in an area that is serviced poorly by public transport as well as being about a 45-minute commute to the CBD in the peak shoulders.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
As an example, Glen, this fine specimen filters out of TradeMe’s results when the maximum price is the extravagant sum of $500k.
It’ll go for way more than its rateable value, though. QV’s mid-range value on that property is $660,000, which still makes it one of the cheaper houses in the street. On a section that size it could easily fetch $700,000.
But let’s not be demonising South Auckland. The problem with telling people with city jobs to buy in the far south is that that it locks out people who want to buy homes in their own neighbourhoods.
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Shady business, on many levels.
I imagine if the fabled Great Correction does eventuate, it will be framed as a National Crisis, and the government will attempt to prevent all those mortgages from going upside-down. That will be expensive.
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bob daktari, in reply to
the government will attempt to prevent all those mortgages from going upside-down
I think you've confused mortgages with banks, individuals will be left to the market...
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
But let’s not be demonising South Auckland.
Oh, I'm not intending to, that just happened to be an easy example of a battered house that's got a price expectation of $silly (as opposed to $ludicrous or $ROFLMFAO), to demonstrate to Glen just what something around the bottom quartile of Auckland's housing market actually looks like. It just so happens, too, that most of the houses that are in the contiguous urban area and priced <$600k are in South Auckland, which is consistent with the only three suburbs with a <$600k median price being in the old Manukau City area.
The problem with telling people with city jobs to buy in the far south is that that it locks out people who want to buy homes in their own neighbourhoods.
Like my wife and I, who would really rather like to buy in Ellerslie, where we live and where we have social connections as well as transport options and community amenity, but yeah, well, we don't have $squillions in parental largesse available to assist us on our way.
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I have a house because three people close to me died.
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BenWilson, in reply to
I doubt the people writing the articles are actually stupid. The true detail is usually in the article anyway. Which leaves me scratching around for their real motives. It's obviously not aimed at Millenials themselves because they don't even read Granny. Presumably it's all about the clickbait and the heightened Google pageranks from all the outraged in-links to give their property advertisers better scores in whatever mysterious way the internet of things actually works. Hell if I know because I have never bought a damned thing from an internet ad. But I can't account for such things as overall branding.
Bottom line is: I don't think this is even vaguely attempting to be journalism.
At some point I will go through with my self promise to just stop reading the Herald at all.
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bob daktari, in reply to
It’s obviously not aimed at Millenials themselves because they don’t even read Granny.
these articles do buy into the narrative that if you forgo smashed avo and work hard you too can own a home (with mummies and daddies help) - if young people weren't so lazy and drugged up they'd have that fruit picking job and home on a hill
its the kiwi dream
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I agree with Ben, I don't think they're even trying to journalism. They've just realised that these stories are a good source of infuriated page-clicks and shares. They're rage-baiting the public.
It's also interesting that 'young couple buy a house' is rare enough to be considered newsworthy. Kind of undermines the narrative in itself.
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Glen Koorey, in reply to
Matthew Poole, in reply to Moz, about 2 hours ago
I suspect that Glen, being from Christchurch, has no idea what the bottom quartile of Auckland's housing actually looks like. Zero non-private-car transport options, and deciding whether you prefer blue or red when you pick the gang affiliation of your neighbours.
Anyone able to translate the worst parts of Otara and Mangere into Christchurch?
Living in Christchurch doesn't make me ignorant of life in other cities. I travel quite a bit for work and I can also read and do my own independent research. I'm also quite intrigued about the apparent blanket snobbery of entire suburbs that seems to condemn them to not even worth looking at on the basis of a few bad streets or sensationalist stories in the media...
My main point still stands. When I bought my first home (in Wellington) it definitely wasn't near the average price for a house in Wgtn, given that it cost us $96k in 1996. But two years later we sold it for about double, so it can't have been all bad... 20 years later we are finally in a house that is probably above the average value for Chch.
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Moz, in reply to
if you forgo smashed avo and work hard you too can own a home (with mummies and daddies help)
It also works on those parents too selfish or feckless to lend/give their kids that crucial two-or-three-hundred-thousand (say it quickly and it doesn't sound like much). Pity the parents who don't have a mostly mortgage-free house in Auckland to borrow against, or who for whatever reason aren't willing and able to risk that by handing money to their kids.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
probably Aranui, maybe Shirley.
Hmmm - well I guess there is the Acheson Street shops a coupla blocks away from me in Shirley - basically a rollerdoor display area, in a state house area - most of which never roll up - there's even a gone-out-of-business 'Dress for Even Less', which says a lot!
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I sometimes think National actually would really like to lose the next one and dodge the bullet.
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These house-buying stories are similar to another tiresome media staple: in order to "prove" that welfare recipients are to blame for their own circumstances, a healthy, prosperous person will choose to live on the benefit for a week or month, and not starve, so there. All other advantages existing prior to the "experiment" (education, professional network, family etc) will be ignored, at least in the headlines.
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These articles are also putting expectations on parents .... we've saved and budgetted to put our kids thru Uni, and out the other end with no debt, trying to give them the same start in life we had.
Now the Herald thinks we're expected to mortgage our retirement savings to set them up with a house as well?
The real problem is simple - property prices are going up faster than inflation ... and it's largly because profits from property are tax free - time to tax capital gains. And of course because of all the house-porn on TV.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
I imagine if the fabled Great Correction does eventuate, it will be framed as a National Crisis, and the government will attempt to prevent all those mortgages from going upside-down. That will be expensive.
In addition to derailing the neoliberal just-world orthodoxy, a bailout of toxic mortgages would also drive a wedge between the market pragmatists and the market purists within the NACT bloc. I suspect both the red and blue blocs are secretly hoping the opposing bloc is in power if/when the housing bubble pops.
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BenWilson, in reply to
these articles do buy into the narrative that if you forgo smashed avo and work hard you too can own a home
Of course. But only people who aren’t actually trying to do it can even possibly buy into that narrative.
It also works on those parents too selfish or feckless to lend/give their kids that crucial two-or-three-hundred-thousand
I’d think that’s the more likely target audience. Also people who want to feel that their investment portfolio is righteous thing that doesn’t exclude those who really try hard enough. I’m under no illusions that my own investment property is not a contributor to anything genuinely positive in the NZ economy.
These articles are also putting expectations on parents …. we’ve saved and budgetted to put our kids thru Uni, and out the other end with no debt, trying to give them the same start in life we had.
Yup, in fact, in my case, I saved and budgetted myself through Uni, twice now*. Having a place that I can literally put my kids in when they grow up is a big motivator. My retirement savings? I don’t expect to retire.
*ETA: With massive parental help. But also by basically being a total tightwad and working really fucking hard, both times.
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Paul Campbell, in reply to
A bailout of toxic mortgages would also drive a wedge between the market pragmatists and the market purists within the NACT bloc. I suspect both the red and blue blocs are secretly hoping the opposing bloc is in power if/when the housing bubble pops.
This is still my theory about why Key quit, he wanted to be out of there ahead of the bubble popping ... which kind of means he expects it to happen before the election and he's leaving English holding the bag of poo
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
I'm also quite intrigued about the apparent blanket snobbery of entire suburbs that seems to condemn them to not even worth looking at on the basis of a few bad streets or sensationalist stories in the media...
There are three - count them, three - suburbs in Auckland with a median house price low enough to qualify for the various forms of government assistance. That's out of well over 100. People want access to transport options, and they want decent schools (that's decent ERO reports, not high decile rankings), and they don't want raging parties at all hours of the day and night. The suburbs that fare really poorly do not, largely, score well by those metrics, but even those three still have houses that, at the cheapest, will go for $300k+. The $100-250k range is, as I said, all single-bedroom apartments and/or townhouses on leasehold land with ground rents that will run the cost of the property up by five or six times if you hold it for a decade.
Those three suburbs are not on the railway lines, they're not close to the motorway, and that means that a commute to the CBD, or even to Penrose, will take well over an hour every day of the week. Is it actually so unreasonable to not want to spend hours of your life in a car every week? Really?
Toss in the rampant gang activity, which is not at all sensationalised by the media based on what I've seen and heard from people who live in gang areas, and they're not conducive to wanting to raise a family. If the only thing they've got going for them is a cheap house, miles away from where the new buyer currently lives, why would you? -
Moz, in reply to
Those three suburbs are not on the railway lines, they're not close to the motorway, and that means that a commute to the CBD, or even to Penrose, will take well over an hour
I was about to say "come to Sydney, we have cheap houses close to PT and motorways" but then I read the rest and those cheap suburbs are all more than an hour from the CBD (about an hour by car, off peak and paying tolls or 75-90 minutes by train). The advantage of Sydney is that there are jobs right out, so you can reasonably find decent paid work even west of the geographic centre (the CBD is close to the eastern edge of the city).
I work with a guy who's right on the margin of homeownership (bought on 5% deposit, mortgage is a big chunk of his income and childcare takes most of what his wife earns). His criteria were straight out of the "how to get wealthy" playbook - he preferred areas where no-one has been shot for a few months, few gangs, where you don't have to lock your car in a garage to keep it, and where there is a PT option. They both work west of the CBD, so their commutes are under an hour although PT makes it over an hour by the time he's walked 4km from the nearest train station to work. But, and this is important, his house went up about 5% last year while ours went up about 20%. He's not going to be able to move to a nicer suburb any time soon, because he's not saving the extra $10,000 a year to compensate for the difference in capital gains.
Amusingly, the inner city scary zones have little effect on prices - a nice terrace just off "The Block" will set you back 2 million, or a big old former pub $4M. Gang violence and drug dealing not optional - people do get killed round there most years, but in Australian terms that doesn't matter because they're mostly black. Not kidding. It really doesn't.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
The advantage of Sydney is that there are jobs right out, so you can reasonably find decent paid work even west of the geographic centre (the CBD is close to the eastern edge of the city).
Yeah, Auckland's highly-paid jobs are largely concentrated in the CBD, which accounts for, from memory, 22% of the region's employment if you count all the jobs within the motorway collar up to Newton Rd/Khyber Pass. There's a fair chunk of decent-paying work in the Albany IT cluster and the manufacturing around Highbrook/East Tamaki, but those areas are all public transport ghettos, made worse in Albany's case by the proliferation of huge loop roads that make bus services a nightmare and pedestrian thoroughfare utterly miserable. There's really the industrial corridor through East Tamaki/Highbrook/Otahuhu/Penrose/Onehunga, the logistics stuff around the airport, the CBD, and Albany, with an attempt at a secondary office location at Takapuna/Smales That's a fair dispersal, but if you work in particular sectors there's very little geographic diversity: in IT it's the CBD or Albany; in top-tier accounting and consulting it's the CBD; in heavy manufacturing it's that corridor but predominately East Tamaki/Highbrook and Penrose; in logistics it's the airport, or a little bit near the port.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
I sometimes think National actually would really like to lose the next one and dodge the bullet.
I agree but it looks like Little is doing a much better job at losing the election than National expected.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
Did I explain why I'm voting National this time?
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
But if you're a CBD person, you *want* to work in a place with shops and bars and coffee and non-suburban people.
And if you're an inveterate suburbanite couple you get jobs in Takapuna and Albany with a sweet commute from your North Shore house, then one of your companies moves to Manukau and the other one out by the airport and suddenly you're both doing the commute from hell.
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lso people who want to feel that their investment portfolio is righteous thing that doesn’t exclude those who really try hard enough. I’m under no illusions that my own investment property is not a contributor to anything genuinely positive in the NZ economy.
I am wary of the "boomers are greedy leeches" narrative. To my mind, the vast majority of older property investors are simply behaving rationally and sensibly because many of them were badly stung in the 80's stock market crash, and in the later finance company collapses. With our tax and investment systems so ridiculously geared towards property as an asset class, for those who could it has simply been the most sensible way to save for their retirement.
The fault lies not with them, but with decades of a Government law and policy-making bias towards property. And it goes back that far .... I remember Michael Cullen being particularly (and cavalierly) dismissive of the idea of introducing a capital gains tax. This sort of institutionalised crisis takes decades to form, and will probably take a long way to unwind - assuming there is a political will to do so.
In the meantime, commercial interests continue to try and find ways to exploit that growth in wealth.
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