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Newsroom’s Alexia Russell sat down with Chief Squirrel JB to chat about what the Government's recent announcement means for first home buyers. Does it remove the stumbling blocks, or is it still hard as ever for young Kiwis to get onto the property ladder? Are there going to be any unintentional consequences?

I was asked to give a radio interview last week on the topic of the Green Party’s policies which they believe will make a sustained difference in house prices. The timing was perfect as I was just about to put pen to paper for my latest column for Squirrel – so here are my thoughts.

The last time 40% deposits for investors were introduced, Auckland house prices had been soaring for four years. This time, we're only a year into the current frenzied house price cycle, and interest rates are much lower than they were. So how much impact will reintroducing the rule have?

Economy expert Tony Alexander discusses the latest results from his surveys of mortgage advisers and real estate agents, plus how a change in LVR restrictions will affect New Zealand's housing market.

Each month I run a survey with the REINZ of real estate agents all around New Zealand, asking them what they are seeing. My latest survey, which yielded a good 369 responses, shows that FOMO, fear of missing out, remains as strong as ever.

Banks were actually already lobbying the Reserve Bank to reinstate LVRs because of their concern about the speed with which house prices were rising and the frenzied level of market activity.

Whilst low interest rates are a major catalyst for increasing house prices, it fundamentally comes down to a supply side issue that many countries haven’t solved, including New Zealand.

Growing house construction is a substantial boom for the economy through extra business for materials manufacturers and distributors, architects, inspectors and so on.

It’s around this time of the year that I take an educated guess at what will happen with house prices and mortgage rates. As I’ve said time and time again, the strongest correlation that exists is between house prices and interest rates.

One of the strongest expectations most of us have had regarding the impact of fighting Covid-19 from early this year, has been that construction of houses will fall away. This expectation was soundly based but the chances of that are getting slimmer by the day.

This Wednesday, Treasury released their latest set of economic and fiscal forecasts, as legislation requires they do just ahead of a general election.

Back in March, as we headed into lockdown, most forecasts for our economy and housing market were decidedly on the pessimistic side. Things certainly have weakened off, but not by as badly as feared, and in some cases the post-lockdown spending surge has produced sales well above levels of a year earlier.