PHOTO: New Zealand house prices have stayed on a longer winning streak than the All Blacks. Photo / File
New Zealand house prices have not fallen since the 2011 Rugby World Cup – that’s a “staggering” 100 consecutive months of year-on-year rises.
Or to put it another way, prices haven’t fallen since the year the deadly Christchurch earthquake hit and Prince William married Kate Middleton.
It meant that in every month since October 2011, national prices have climbed higher than the same time a year earlier, new analysis from the Real Estate Institute showed.
It’s sent New Zealand’s median house price skyrocketing from $359,000 in October 2011 to $615,000 this January – a 71.3 per cent increase.
And the nine-year run seems set to continue after prices this January also leapt 12 per cent year-on-year, Real Estate Institute chief executive Bindi Norwell said.
“Having house prices increase for 100 months in a row across the country is staggering,” she said.
Yet while it may be great news for homeowners and investors, the staggering rise has pushed first-home buyers to take on ever more debt in a bid to get on the property ladder.
New data by the Reserve Bank showed 40 per cent of first-home buyers who took out a new home loan last month had deposits of less than 20 per cent of the loan value.
READ MORE VIA NZHERALD