Posts by Lucy Telfar Barnard
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OnPoint: Don't put words in our mouths, Rob, in reply to BenWilson,
They choose spring and summer on advice that the best prices are usually obtained then.
That's not the major reason. My observation, and what lots of REAs will also tell anyone who'll listen (because they want their income to be less seasonal...) is that when house prices are lower in winter it's because it's the less desireable stock left over from summer sales, and that good properties listed in winter will get as good or better prices because there's less good stock available.
The main reason people list in spring and summer is because they're going to be looking to buy again themselves, and traipsing round open homes, or moving, in winter, is cold and wet and bothersome; and because if they're looking to buy again themselves they know there'll be more stock available for them to choose from; or because there's more stock available they've found something they want to buy and so they're selling as well. It's a bit chicken and egg, but it's how it is. -
OnPoint: Don't put words in our mouths, Rob, in reply to Keith Ng,
So there are some seasonal patterns to house sales in general. What drives those seasonal changes, and might it affect the ethnic distribution of house sales?
For example, do migrants from a particular part of the world come at a particular time of year? Such as coinciding with school years here or school year in country of origin? Or maybe with specific holiday periods?
Is there a sudden rush of house-buying before the uni term starts, by parents of international students?
Or maybe there’s a house-hunting season when the weather is nicer or the kids are at school where leisure-buyers (without time constraint) dominate and overwhelm urgent-buyers (such as immigrants).
As a long-time real-estate voyeur (what REAs call “tyre-kickers”), and someone with a bit of experience in seasonality analysis, yes to all that.
I don’t know what period the dataset covered. I thought about looking it up, but then thought the following observation would be less biased if I didn’t look it up:
New Zealand house sales have traditionally been highly seasonal, with sales peaking in late spring and late summer (there’s a dip in late December/January when the property-owning class tend to go on holiday). I don’t know whether or not overseas property investment behaviour is seasonal. If overseas property investment interest is roughly similar all year round, then estimating the participation of overseas investors in the New Zealand market from a set of winter sales would over-estimate the contribution of overseas investment to New Zealand real estate sales, while using summer data could underestimate it. If overseas investment is also seasonal, the overestimate would be increased or decreased depending on how that seasonality was distributed, with the limitation that locals and overseas investors can only buy what is for sale, and less property is for sale in winter.
Following that train of thought… if overseas investment interest is non-seasonal, and if their participation in the market is more than negligible, then I would expect their presence in the market to create more upwards pressure on house prices in winter than in summer. In a resident-only market, the seasonality of interest in buying roughly matches the seasonality of interest in selling, as most vendors is moving over in rather than out of the property market. However, if investor interest is steady over winter, but the supply of houses for sale is less, then supply<demand means that prices will increase.
So now I really, really want to know whether overseas investment – or local “property investment” (vs “home buying”) for that matter – is seasonal. Because if it’s not, then comparing property sales seasonality across different regions might give some clues about the contribution of property investors (overseas or local) to Auckland price pressures.
Ultimately, all the focus on name-analysis, or overseas-buyer registers, hides the fact that local investors also put home buying out of reach. Demand is demand. Overseas investors are a handy scapegoat to blame for disappointed would-be home-buyers, but I wonder if it wouldn’t be more fair to blame “property investors” full stop, regardless of where they’re based. Yes, there is the additional issue of rental income going out of New Zealand rather than staying here, but that’s not what the disappointed home-buyers are frustrated by.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Stephen Judd,
The flipside of an overseas landlord not being around to do shit to help you is they can’t hurt you as easily either.
The Residential Tenancies Act 1986 requires landlords who are out of the country for 21 days or longer to appoint a local agent.
'Course, the tenant has to know about that to complain about it.
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I only just saw the break-down of sales by "name ethnic origin". The bit I found particularly depressing was the percentage of sales to "Pacific" names. It's true that plenty of Pacific people have "European" names, but still. 11% of the census population, but under 2% of sales speaks volumes about inequity, income disparity, and access to capital and/or tenure security. I know the Pacific population is relatively young, but I don't think the difference in age distribution comes anywhere close to explaining the difference in property purchases.
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Up Front: Stand for... Something, in reply to Alfie,
Or it shows that these days people don't engage with an issue by attending physical meetings.
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Speaker: Identification strategy: Now…, in reply to Tze Ming Mok,
If we want to figure out the impact of foreign PRC buyers – or more to the point, foreign anyone buyers – on the housing market without the straight up government data, you should probably just do a large-scale sample survey on house buying with a lot of ethnic minority oversampling.
There is another way, though it would rely on another real estate data leak, and that is to apply the same methodology Rob Salmond used to data from some NZ city that doesn't have a property bubble but which has sufficient resident ethnically Chinese New Zealanders to provide numbers. If you looked at the proportion of names by apparent ethnicity there, it might give some indication of cultural propensity/accessibility to property-buying.
There would be a segment of the market left out, in that most migrants settle in Auckland, but an additional allowance could be made based on census-based estimates of the proportion of migrants of different national origins who settle in Auckland.
You'd take the 39% of Auckland buyers with "PRC-sounding names", and subtract the proportion of comparison city(s) buyers with "PRC-sounding names", and then subtract an estimated number of new migrants of PRC-origin likely to have bought property, and the percentage left after that would be a better indication of the participation of PRC-based buyers in the Auckland market than is the 30% left after "39%-9% Chinese population".But it would require more leaked data.
Of course, the best measure would be, y'know, a foreign buyers register. I'm overseas at the mo. and missed the start of this furore, but wouldn't a bit of patience with the IRD scheme also answer the question, without having to indulge in inciting racial hatred?
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Polity: Gay marriage, weed, and death…, in reply to Russell Brown,
True dat.
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Polity: Gay marriage, weed, and death…, in reply to Russell Brown,
The people who vote in their primaries are lagging behind the general population.
That’s an interesting point. So it basically means that a Republican candidate needs to express an anti-marriage equality position to win the primaries, but a pro-marriage equality position to win the election? It’ll be entertaining watching the candidates formulate positions that they can spin either way….
Although, when it comes to the presidential vote, it’s not a straight majority vote, right? So it would really depend on how voter opinion was split in the swing states. -
Speaker: Abortion: morality and health, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I guess for me I’d rather operate from a position of saying lets say this is legal and in certain exceptions we’ll decide to overrule the mothers’ choice because in the expert opinion of these 3 doctors and psychologists the fetus will survive and be healthy and continuing with the pregnancy will pose no physical and mental risk to the mother.
See, that I could live with, however messy it might get. So I'm glad we persisted with this discussion.
Lilith, it is a good point that if a fetus is extracted alive it's called "birth", though I'd note that stillbirths are also births, so being alive is not a pre-requisite for being born.
But it does raise the point that in order for a late-term live fetus to be aborted rather than born, if it might survive, it would have to be ... (searching round for a non-emotive word to use here... terminated? euthanised? dispatched?) before birth in order to make it an abortion.
On the other point in that post: I don't think that the fact there are other serious issues (children without adequate food, clothing, housing) in the world means I'm not allowed to do theoretical hand-wringing about the finer details of putting in place a better legal environment around abortion. Besides which, I spend most of my working life doing things that in one way or another are intended to improve the adequacy of housing, including housing for children, so I don't feel that I'm ignoring those other serious issues.
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Speaker: Abortion: morality and health, in reply to Bart Janssen,
What about viability without medical intervention?
I meant "average age of viability without medical intervention" as the point up to which abortion would be available without hoops.
I can't see the logic in saying that I can't consider/discuss/argue/whatever about how or whether abortion could or should be available in late term, on the basis that it's so extreme an example that it's not worth arguing about, and no woman's going to want an abortion that late anyway - but we can't draw a line and say there's a point after which it's too late to have an abortion.
If women won't want abortions in late term, then it doesn't matter if you set the maximum point for allowing abortions before late term (whatever you/we happen to decide is late term). But if you want abortions to be available beyond that point, then it can only be because you think some women will want to have abortions then, and if so, then you do have to consider how that's going to happen.