PROPERTY BOOM CONTINUES

Well, what a year 2020 has been. When Covid-19 hit our shores, and New Zealand definitively shut up shop in late March, the doom and gloom merchants were out in force, predicting a vertiginous drop in house prices. The nation was hermetically sealed from the rest of the world, and a slide downwards, or at least an evening out of the upwards trajectory, seemed likely.

But it seems that it takes more than a pandemic to keep Kiwis down, especially when it comes to housing. With New Zealanders returning home by the thousands, a loosening up of LVRs, and people who still had jobs looking for places to spend money in lieu of overseas holidays, the housing market has been running red hot.

While some pundits predict a slight slowdown once the Reserve Bank reinstates LVR restrictions earlier than announced (March rather than May 2021), which will affect higher risk investors with equity lower than 30% in particular, economists don’t