• OPINION: The best investment I ever made was when I had no idea I was making it.

It was November 2012 and I bought a house in Auckland.

I was so nervous at the auction I was shaking: 120 people crammed into the lounge (and spilling out on to the deck). There were 23 bidders from memory and things got pretty feverish.

My mate told me to throw another $10,000 of the bank’s money at the auctioneer – and suddenly I was the proud new owner of a draughty former state house in a suburb no-one had heard of (New Windsor, near Avondale).

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live-in-a-box

After eight years in power, National is still telling us to wait out the house price crisis.

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