Playing house price catch-up

PHOTO: 123rf – Sheer unaffordability may limit the extent of Auckland’s price rises, ANZ says.

Auckland is likely to be left out of New Zealand’s house price rises over the coming years, a bank economist is predicting.

ANZ chief economist Sharon Zollner said the city’s recent house price growth had left it with an affordability problem that would keep the brakes on the market.

She said the mortgage repayments required to purchase a median-priced house in Auckland were now 50 per cent of the average household income. That was the same level as at the peak of the last interest rate cycle, when mortgage rates hit 11 per cent.

 

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