PHOTO: NZ Property Market
Despite numerous vociferous predictions to the contrary, New Zealand’s residential property market continues to march on in the face of a cataclysmic global pandemic.
Thousands of Kiwis have lost their jobs as a result of strict measures to combat the deadly virus, hundreds of businesses have gone bust, the economy is officially in recession, and yet, despite all this and more, residential property values continue to hold their own across much of the country – well, for now, at least.
You see, that’s the trouble with writing articles like this one; the market could change tomorrow, causing this to age like bad cheese. Before that does or does not happen, let’s take a closer look at why the property market continues to defy expectations at the present time of writing.
5. Pent-up demand
Does anyone else feel like they’ve spent an inordinate amount of time at home this year?
At 11:59pm on 25 March 2020, New Zealand moved into Alert Level 4, putting the country into a nationwide lockdown that would last until 28 April. The effect of that on the residential property market was severe, essentially freezing all economic activity for over a month.
Then, as the country moved out of lockdown and made its way through the alert levels, the property market seemed to rebound like a basketball dropped from the top of the Sky Tower as property-mad Kiwis – many of them first-home buyers, but we’ll get into why this group has been more active of late shortly – made up for lost time and started looking for their new home.
Can you blame us? All that time stuck at home left many of us wishing we had something a little bigger.
4. Migration
Now, we know what you’re thinking – aren’t New Zealand’s borders closed?
That’s right, they are currently closed to most travellers, and yet Statistics New Zealand’s latest figures show a net migration gain of 79,400 (+2.1%) for the year ended June. Meanwhile, more than 33,000 Kiwis have returned home since the pandemic’s onset – a number that continues to grow.
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