Quote Originally Posted by Bjauck View Post
Good luck with that SC. You must have joined Sharetrader at a very young age.

Buying a first house in today's market with so much uncertainty around takes cojones.

The latest Demographia survey places NZ as the most unaffordable house market (by quite a big margin) compared to the countries we like to compare ourselves with (Australia, Canada, USA, UK.)

So the NZGovt faces considerable pressure to increase development and investment settings to make our housing sufficient for the demand from a growing population and affordable
Shewd Crude is fortunate to be on the path for getting into a home. I myself didn't own my 1st home until I was around the same age. With interests rates going lower and lower (soon to be negative), there's all the incentive for people to own their 1st home.

I've mentioned before that the NZ gov't isn't serious about making houses affordable. It never has and never will while places like Canada has make homes more affordable (and at least addressed the issue). Perhaps it's due to the MMP election system we have that puts gov't in a no-win situation ; ie. the issue of CGT being squashed down by NZ 1st. Then you have the supply issue where local councils are not playing ball with Parliament. Crown land not being released into public hands (as local Iwi getting 1st pick - and lots of Iwi's are slow at development). We have the Christchurch council too slow at releasing land for development and Wellington says we're not going to give you transfer funding for the rebuilt ; then the council puts the burden on the rate payers ; last I hear Ecan wants rates to go from 8% to 13% rise for next year. Yes taxation is a key determinant - I mean what else would you expect??? You have an asset class in residential property that is pretty much goes exempt from any capital gains tax, while the NZ gov't pushes the low and middle class into Kiwi Saver, for which that asset class is taxed and much higher levels (ie FIF tax on years of paper negative returns). I know of no where else in the OECD that has such a huge disparity of taxation than NZ.