Podcast Appearances
So, you know, there's regional variability.
There's also a bit of variability there by property type as well.
Now, apartments are only about 4% of our housing stock and a lot of that's, you know, pretty much in central Auckland and central Wellington.
So it is really...
sort of a niche segment, if you like, and isn't geographically spread.
But yeah, perhaps a wee bit more weakness there for apartments.
Not 100% sure why, but we can definitely speculate about possible reasons.
And, you know, I've heard anecdotally some concerns about, you know, build quality on some of these projects, you know, people worried about
buying an apartment and having some leaky home issues down the track.
Not that that's going to apply everywhere, but that does seem to be a concern for some people.
Body corporate fees going up, insurance fees going up, of course.
And maybe the lack of net migration at the moment that would students, that sort of thing, potentially
reduce the appetite to invest in apartments because you'll see investors tend to perhaps buy apartments a bit more often than owner-occupiers.
So maybe there's a few concerns there from the investment community about apartments.
So maybe just keeping a bit more of a lid on prices there.
So yeah, a bit of variability by region, a bit of variability by property type.
But when you add it all up,
relatively flat.
So I got asked by a journalist last week sort of when do we start to see house prices rise a bit more significantly, if we do.
I mean, I found myself saying, well, it could be a few months, yeah, so, you know, maybe the headlines got carried a wee bit away, but the tone of the headline was pretty much, you know, wait till the second half of the year, which I can't remember if I exactly said or not, but, yeah, it's not hard to imagine that if you think about where we've been over the last few months kind of tracking sideways, and, yep,