WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY
It’s always a risky business crystal ball gazing. There’s serious pressure to deliver dramatic predictions, ones that herald substantial change. Property market forecasts are primed for that. And the ups (of spectacular price growth) and downs (of strict government and regulatory policies) seen in New Zealand’s market in recent years have gone hand in hand with that.
So coming into 2020, what can property investors expect? In 2019, they gained a reprieve from the threat of a capital gains tax, adjusted to the arrival of the Healthy Homes minimum standards and then began to see a flow of noticeably strong property market data in the final months of the year. Do these developments mean, as some commentators have suggested, that not just a recovery but another boom, with accompanying price spikes, is on the way?
We suspected the truth might be somewhat more complicated – especially for investors who are now facing a swathe of tenancy law reform proposals which are causing serious concerns. To get to the bottom of the story for our annual summer forecast, we sat down and interviewed a wide range of property sector participants. Here’s our take on what the experts had to say about the year ahead.
