It is good to see strong buyer confidence is back, several factors have contributed to this. With seven weeks of lockdown and 6 months later with no immediate outlook to travel overseas for many they decided to focus on their living arrangements. For the older generation, that was updating their home, renovations, and furnishings. For the younger generation, their big OE was put on hold for several years and now they are focusing on buying their first home. Back before Covid 19 started there was a shortage of property listings nationwide – even now, August was 13% below August 2019 and 65% below August 2010. Mortgage rates have been cut to all time lows and further falls will happen early next year should the Reserve Bank cut the official cash rate down. We have banks giving us around 1.4% return on our investments, pay 33% withholding tax on this it come s out at around 0.9% on your money. We are seeing investors, cashing up and searching for better yields. Real estate offers this, plus long-term capital gain. We are also likely to see more pooled funds. Property Investment vehicles where a group of investors can place a figure say $20,000 plus and gain exposure to a portfolio of real estate assets. This could be in the form of buying into existing assets or contribute towards a new project. Subdivision/blocks of housing or commercial blocks. We currently have an opportunity like this and please feel free to contact me in confidence on this. A total of 2900 new homes were consented by Christchurch City Council over the last 12 months. The most since the residential rebuild tapered off 4 years ago and double the Pre quake levels of those consented more than half were apartments, flats townhouses or retirement units The local market will, I believe to continue with more good forward momentum for the rest of 2020 as many vendors come to the market in Spring and Summer.
Dave Findlay | 027 220 5874 | dave@gpre.co.nz