BRINGING THE HOUSE DOWN

In September 2017, New Zealand faced a “housing crisis”, which the new Government vowed to fix. Since that time, house prices have risen by nearly 50%.

The owner of a median-priced house will now be more than $250,000 richer; a well-off household also with a beach house will be at least $500,000 to the good; a landlord with four properties will be about $1 million better off–in less than four years.

If you were yet to get on the property ladder – say you were young or low-paid – you would be no better off. In fact, tenancy bond data shows that rents have risen by 20% since the 2017 election on average nationwide, so you would now be worse off than before the house-price explosion.