Kelvin Davidson

So yeah, not the phrase you use, but sort of tracking sideways to a large extent.

And it'll be disappointing for some, of course, and great for others.

And of course, it's a good market for first home buyers at the moment.

So always two sides of the coin in the housing market.

I guess another thing we obviously can do through the HVI is to look at property types.

Townhouses, I should say, standalone houses only, in air quotes, down minus 0.7% in the year to January.

So, you know, that's kind of tracking sideways.

Townhouses down 1.7% and apartments down 4.1%.

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