Ryan Bridge: The state of the housing market

I've got some numbers for this morning.

QV House Price Index for September quarter: guess what? Going backwards. Auckland leading the fall. 

Homes are worth an average of 1.1% less. Auckland's 2.5% less. 

And how does that make you feel, really? 

Most homeowners won't care because they're not trying to sell. But for those who are, it's depressing. 

Now first home buyers are cranking - a quarter of new mortgages went to first home buyers in the first half of the year. 

So we've got to ask ourselves: is this really what we want? 

When the numbers are bad for owners they're good for would-be-owners. 

We're forever complaining about the price of property, until we need to sell. 

So if this is the new normal, we'd better get used to it. 

It's interesting to look at what's selling. We had another developer —apartments— go bust in Auckland yesterday. 

Have a look at the apartments, even the nice ones, they were building - is that really somewhere you'd want to live?

Guess what's not selling? These buildings without carparks. 

This idea that somebody will want to buy a Shoebox and catch a bus is clearly not working out - they're taking the longest to sell. 

Turns out people also like privacy. Who would have thought? 

The bigger story here is that prices are lower and deep down, even though we say we want to fix the housing crisis, most people aren't happy about it.

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