PHOTO: Tony Alexander. FILE
Welcome to the REINZ & Tony Alexander Real Estate Survey.
This survey gathers together the views of licensed real estate agents all over New Zealand regarding how they are seeing conditions in the residential property market in their areas at the moment. We ask them how activity levels are changing, what the views of first home buyers and investors are, and the factors which are affecting sentiment of those two large groups.
Over the past four weeks the Reserve Bank has confirmed restoration of Loan to Value Ratios (LVRs) effective immediately for new borrowers, and the Finance Minister has issued an instruction to the Reserve Bank that it must take the government’s housing policy goals into account
when making its decisions. The Minister has also requested
research on application of restrictions on interestonly lending to investors, and rules on debt-to-income regulations which could reduce investor purchasing of existing houses.
These are early days for these shots across the bow of a residential real estate market in New Zealand which has been exceptionally active with a high pace of price increases since around September last year. But there are
a small number of results in this month’s REINZ & Tony Alexander Real Estate Survey which suggest some mild easing in some aspects of demand, and perhaps some more properties being brought to the market by investors. But overall, with a net 88% of agents still seeing prices
rising and a net 86% still seeing FOMO on the part of buyers, very strong conditions persist with shortages of listings still a major concern for those seeking to purchase a property.
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