By David Hargreaves
You know, I was really beginning to think (as well as hope) that we might just get away with it.
By 'it' I mean the worrying rising tide of young New Zealanders borrowing smelling-salt-requiring sums of money to get themselves into first homes.
What was needed was time.
We needed the economy to stay buoyant, employment levels to stay strong, and the housing market to hold up. Then over the course of the next two or three years the FHBs could bed themselves in and see some equity built up in their homes.
And it was looking good that we might get there.
And then you-know-what came along...
What happens in the coming months in the housing market will not just, at all, be a story about first home buyers. That's for sure. But as the buyers with generally the least equity in their homes the FHBs are at the frontline. So, I make no apologies for focusing on them here.
I've previously written of my very mixed feelings as I've, on a monthly basis, followed the surge of borrowing by the FHBs.
As we now know with the benefit of hindsight the first iteration of the Reserve Bank's loan to value ratio (LVR) 'speed limits' imposed in 2013 disproportionately impacted first home buyers.
The price to pay
And I did wonder aloud if as a country we may have a price to pay for shutting FHBs out of the market, or at least forcing them to delay by maybe some years buying houses - and seeing them miss out on the house price appreciation that occurred.
According to property information and analysis provider CoreLogic, FHBs were accounting for about 25% of house sales in this country prior to the implementation of the LVR speed limits.
It's not quite apples-with-apples, but mortgage information available from mid-2014 showed the FHBs by then accounting for less than 10% of the total mortgage money advanced. In the meantime, the investors made hay.
It wasn't until the RBNZ put the hammer down on investors - with a 40% deposit rule applied - from mid-2016 that the FHBs started to get their chance again.
The figures can be observed through the Reserve Bank's excellent residential mortgage lending by borrower type series that's been published since August 2014.
Towards the end of last year the monthly borrowing by the FHBs hit a new high in dollar terms of over $1.2 billion. In January the FHBs snared their biggest percentage of the total amount of money borrowed, at nearly 19%.
It's a stretch
Separate RBNZ figures on residential mortgage lending by debt-to-income ratio confirmed that FHBs (and other buyers for that matter) were financially stretching themselves further to get into homes.
Sector lending figures from the RBNZ show that New Zealanders in total owed nearly $280 billion in mortgages as at the end of February. That total was up 7.2% on the amount outstanding a year ago and was the fastest rate of growth since mid-2017.
As I said nearly a year ago now:
...As a country we need to hope that right now we don't get any or all of: A housing market correction, higher interest rates, a slowing economy with rising unemployment.
Any or all of those things would see young home owners come under intolerable pressure.
Well, the only thing certain among that lot is that we are not going to get higher interest rates. And thank goodness for that.
Otherwise, not so good.
It's worth looking at the magnitude of what we are dealing with here. I've had a bit of a crunch of some of the February 2020 new mortgage figures.
Gearing up
The FHB grouping borrowed $938 million in that month. Of that, $371 million was borrowed on deposits of less than 20%.
So, around 40% of the money borrowed by the FHBs was on high loan to value ratio mortgages - which is very much consistent with figures in recent times.
Putting the data in terms of individual loans, the $938 million borrowed was across 2165 mortgages. So, that's an average sized mortgage of $433,256.
Breaking it down further, the $371 million within the overall total that was high LVR borrowing was spread across 752 mortgages. That's an average sized loan of $493,351. It's okay if you say it fast. Just don't dwell on it.
One obvious concern now is the possibility that house prices might sink sufficiently that some of these high LVR borrowers get into the dreaded negative equity - yes, the loan could become bigger than the value of the house.
However, with interest rates going ever lower that's actually not a problem per se. Even though people are taking on mountainous amounts of debt the ability to service the debt has actually been getting easier and easier. So, if you are not wanting or needing to move, you can hunker down and keep paying the mortgage and wait for the market to improve. And it will. Over time.
Job losses are the game changer
The real crunch though is what happens when people lose their jobs and that mountain of debt still requires its monthly fix. Unfortunately that's where we are now.
The Government response has been fantastic so far in terms of its willingness to throw money in the direction of wage subsidies. And there's the potential of six-month mortgage payment "holidays" (although of course the meter keeps running in terms of interest and principal owed).
How far can the Government go with its support? It will need to do more yet, that's for sure.
And this is where the banks - who are being cut a lot of slack by the RBNZ through such measures as the delay of the increased capital requirements and a loosening of the core funding ratio - need to come to the party and stay there.
Banks need to keep it real
We don't need a return to the bad old days of banks being all over you like a rash in good times and then "OHHHH. Give me my money back" when times turn bad. I would like to think not. And I think we've got an RBNZ at the moment that would be watching closely and reminding said banks of the slack it has been cutting them.
So, that's really just a bit of a scene-setter. Plenty to think about and keep fingers crossed over. I'm not going to make any predictions. It's pointless at the moment until such time as a rather nasty little virus has been put back in its box.
Let's just do the best we can to make this all work out.
83 Comments
This takes me back to 1987. Most may not remember the sharemarket crash. It wasn't just a NZ thing but for those of us involved in it, it was big. We'd just bought in the nice side of Auckland. We'd just borrowed more money than we'd ever done before & then Bang(!) before you know it, within 12 months if my memory serves me, Auckland housing was down 15-20%. I think more in the higher priced parts. And stayed there for 4-5 years. In other words, we'd lost more than half our equity. Buggar. The personal effects were deep depression which lasted for 5 years including all those terrible things you contemplate doing. You are very alone. I would not recommend that part of the journey to anyone. But it didn't kill me (and it tried pretty hard to) and it made me stronger on the other side. This was the first of three similar episodes, the other two being of our own making, that kept me in depression/jail for almost 3 decades. And we owe ourselves plenty over that time, that's for sure. That's life. Shit happens. Today, we've managed to get our noses back in front again but are also running out of working time. Coronavirus is not ideal. We may have lost another years income, we'll know more by the end of June. So, in summary, even if you're a first time buyer & even if you go backwards financially over the coming months/years, hang in there. Dig in. Hard. Fight for it. And most importantly of all, don't split up whatever you do. Stay together & build your family up. Take the knocks & become stronger on the other side but keeping the family together is a biggie. It has many advantages in the long term. Good luck.
You'll be much off here than most other places.
We have a welfare state which will deliver basic needs, unlike other places, and we'll recover more quickly. Part of the beauty of being a small economy in the scheme of things, as well as a food producing nation.
We will have to focus on internalising more of our economy, so we dont get overtaken by wider private interests. Things will be different, and international tourist wont be the same. Hopefully we chose this opportunity to upskill our workforce and add value to produce we export. Further, its an opportunity for NZ inc to become more self sufficient; which Muldoon attempted until the world banksters changed the rules on lending half way through.
Globalisation hasnt worked for anyone but the few. There is no such thing as free trade on which it is base. Roger Douglas was nothing but a failed pig farmer, who failed the country badly.
Believe me, NZ politicians/ Economy depends on China.
It is so deep rooted that NZ has to accept them as masters - Thanks to national politicans who ruled over 9 years and sold NZ bit by bit and now even Labour party, in fact all politcans understand that best mantra for Rock Star Economy is to be a part of China.
Look anywhere and all projects / assets will be owned / funded by.....Many benifitted in millions by selling them at premium and have now reached a position where no average Kiwi can bid against them - Like it or not but is truth - if any average kiwi is able to own is because they do not want it ....like a leftover.
Yes, I remember 1987 well. It was particularly rough on the SME sector where business owners had liens on their homes. I suspect that sector is in no different situation this time. I think perhaps Parliament should consider a law whereby those liens are cancelled, or cannot be acted upon, where disruption to the business was mandated by the state.
I also think perhaps we need a law similar to Chapter 11 in the US, that allows bankrupt companies a period of time to trade out of bankruptcy;
https://www.uscourts.gov/services-forms/bankruptcy/bankruptcy-basics/ch…
LJM yes that dark period is often ignored. Also you didn’t mention the lead up to 1987 where mortgage rates rose quite rapidly to 17/18% which simply blew what had been realistic household budgets out of the water. And the farmers, the removal of the ill considered SMPs and other unfortunate subsidies crippled many, very many. Too many did not survive that.
Your last point is pure gold. Relationship breakdown could be the biggest destroyer of wealth there is, with assets/equity cut in half and one or both parties' health and income generating ability reduced. Who wouldn't pay what it takes to save a relationship? You get all the benefits of a healthy relationship with the bonus of keeping both parties' equity intact.
Once the house price slump exceeds the threshold of 20% (and I would be extremely surprised if this was not the case) then the percentage of home owners in negligible or negative equity will start to become something to pay close attention to, especially when unemployment exceeds the 10% threshold and the amount of mortgagee sales starts to increase. The housing bubble will burst - hopefully it will be painful but not catastrophic - the only certain thing is that it will happen, notwithstanding the delusional wishes of investors, real estate agents ans speculators.
The only good thing is that, had the bubble burst a few years later, it might have been an immense mess. Better sooner rather than later, as the RBNZ or the Government have never had the balls to trigger a managed deflation of this bubble, and an escape from the fool's paradise of housing speculation. So it is now about to burst, and the economy will, with time, re-balance itself towards productive activities and real jobs.
But the cost of building a new house (that ultimately sets the price of the market) is now $4-500k + land due to the huge regulatory overheads impossed over last 10-15 years. Cost per m² of house up 200% in 20 years vs 50% inflation. It's not a bubble because regulators have ensured you can't build anything cheaper - as govt discovered with kiwibuild.
how do regulatory overheads increase the cost to build by 200%? That seems a hell of a lot. I would have thought it was because inflation from low interest rates is showing up in housing, education and healthcare while other things got cheaper or stayed the same to balance out to 50%.
We have done everything we could to support the market from mortgage holidays to wage subsidies.
Banks need to be realistic and minimise losses by managing themselves out of existing high LVR positions before prices fall too far. This is not a time for the softly-softly approach of extend and pretend.
My concern in all of this is a policy response where the government takes an equity stack in the house but provides nothing for those who are prudent savers without a house yet. Its all very uncertain. I just get the feeling that there will be an enormous effort to cushion the fall ...
National voters were happy for John Key and Bill English to tell the world we should be celebrating the fact that we had very expensive housing. So do we want expensive housing or not? If we do, then no government support because you benefited on the way up. If you don't, then lets implement policies to bring the cost of housing back down - so its affordable for FHB's and it doesn't create a debt bubble.
Remember a lot of smart money sold excess property in the last 18 months including John Key follow the smart money not the FHB FOMO from last 2 years. The RE have created a market of no price marketing and push up property prices to buyers who have been falling for the fear of missing out debt for life investment???
If property is such a great investment people would never sell it to buy anything else????
We ned to let it fall now otherwise we will find ourselves in a bigger mess and even more pain.
Increasing the supply of money (first via private debt, now that that is dead, via government debt), yet reducing its cost (interest) will punish everyone who stores their value in money. Other forms of assets (including consumable stocks) adjust their measurement in money term (i.e. they will increase in direct proportion to the increase in supply).
same as always. let the bank go under and the shareholders loose the lot, or they can put back in some of these dividends they have received and support their investment. Never happen as they control the govt and will just tap us tax payers for it. Socialise losses, privatise profits..
From my understanding, that debt was money created out of thin-air and given to the borrower to pay for that house.
By negotiating that debt to a lower amount, the borrower keeps the debt repayment going albeit on a reduced amount.
This still means that the bank does not get the expected return and shareholders lose out. But that is business. What am I misunderstanding?
You are right, it wouldn't be fair, but you are wrong to believe that free markets care a toss about fairness. The fairness will come from the likelihood that if you've already paid off your debt you've probably also been conservative with your money. You will survive the losses. Others, not so much.
The shareholders, for example. They would not be happy to own a company that is giving money away. Banks are not charities, they are businesses. A bank would trigger a mortgagee sale instead, if it thinks it can get the most money by doing so. This is why I can see the amount of mortgagee sales increasing substantially in the future, further depressing house prices. The trick for the banks is not too do that too massively or too much at the same time, as in this case the resulting increased amount of individuals in negative equity would then start a cascading effect. We saw this happening with the 2008 GFC, and it was not pretty. And this crisis could be, for the housing market, worse than the 2008 one, especially here in NZ.
Mostly disagree with the headline - what we needed was regulation/proactive approach to housing in NZ, but instead we had a greed and narcissism (me...now) culture, not just the young but the old as well, that have created some of the worlds most expensive houses and some of the highest private debt levels in the world.
To say that we needed stability as a cure to fix irrational behavior doesn't make any sense at all (in my opinion...). That is giving carrots when we need to apply sticks.
We've made our bed (short term thinking, maximising profit for the now) with little consideration for the future and long term, so now we need to sleep in it.
I do have a lot of sympathy for the fhb that could see a long time ago that it was in bubble territory, and so waited and waited and waited...
But you can only wait so long, everyone telling you what a fool you have been, and then, with the biological clock ticking, you reach an age where you must put down a nest. And so they bought. Their only crime was being born around 1990.
To beat them with a stick..really? We should count ourselves lucky if they don't come at us with sticks.
Yes that's right about the sticks. I didn't see many in the older generation out protesting about the policies being put forward. There was too much self interest involved. Comments like John Key is such a good man, the kind of guy you'd have a beer with. That while he won't implement a foreign buyer ban, capital gains tax or any other wise tool to prevent the creation of debt we now have. And then sells out his house to a Chinese buyer at the peak of the market? Its pretty corrupt politics in my view (a shallow, open, form of insider trading..) - yet National appears to still get abaout 40-45% of the vote? Bizarre. It's almost as if we want to have financial turmoil in this country given what we vote for.
Tim will tell, it may not be as bad as what I'm thinking it could be - at worst we have mass mortgage defaults and depending upon how that is dealt with, social unrest. Greece style? https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-137-30553-4_10
I'm one of those stuck trying to sell my house in the middle of this. Lots of could-have-beens I'm not thinking about. Was contacted yesterday by a FHB who is interested in buying. Said they've been looking for a year and now might be a good time as there will be less competition. A lot of life comes down to accidents of birth. I was lucky to buy 7 years ago. They might be lucky to be in a position to buy soon instead of a year ago. Only time will tell.
Having lived in the US and witnessed first hand the property bubble explode there - witnessing the madness here in NZ the last 10 years has been rather painful knowing the possible outcome of such, in my opinion, foolish behavior and policies (and politics).
Ultimately, long term and from a utilitarian view, I think a significant fall in housing in NZ would be very good for our society (an economy...again long term view here guys and girls and removing any emotional bias/loss aversion).
Yes, I agree. Now it is important to manage the bursting of the bubble as best as we can. I would focus the attention on FHB's and let over-exposed housing speculators and investor drown, if necessary. There is a difference between gambling on the housing market (and therefore implicitly accepting the associated risks), and buying a house for your family; banks and the government should take this into account.
Of course, the alternative to the head line is that we just instead had affordable housing for FHB's to purchase, but instead most voters didn't want to pay capital gains tax, they wanted to sell their house to the highest paying foreign purchaser, and found that high immigration was increasing demand on the market which we all making them richer on paper. Nothing to see here...
So us gloomsters were correct. To think that flipping houses and borrowing like drunken sailors as a substitute for wealth creation would end in tears actually comes as a surprise to trained economists beggars belief.
Pity the youth...we sure have f##d it for them.
Completely correct. I would not define them as gloomsters, but only people who never believed that you can indefinitely defeat the forces of the market, common sense and the force of gravity. I feel for the new generation too; they are paying the price for the greed and stupidity of many individuals and organisations (such as the RBNZ with its policy of artificially low interest rates). Some of them should have known better.
Let’s just wait and see what happens to the housing market in NZ
Some areas will get hammered a bit but others will actually hold up very well.
When you can own a good home in a good area for less than renting, why would prices drop???
Nothing surer, the young ones will be even keener now to be owning a home rather than renting!!!!
But what happens if rents drop. We are going to have levels of unemployment we have never seen before. Even if we only have four weeks lockdown who is going to reopen their hospitality business. I won’t be rushing into town for a coffee as I have my own machine and beans. Tourism will be non existent and we will have winter weather to contend with. Retailers are also going to struggle to come back.
Rents may well drop in Certain areas if Landlords permit that to happen!
Personally knowing all our tenants can’t actually see many if any unable to pay weekly rent when most have more than one avenue of income.
Things are going to pick up pretty quickly for most once lockdown is eased.
Full rent received for all properties last week, that may change as we go longer in lockdown, however we are pretty confident we won’t have any bad debts going forward.
No one knows at the moment what is going to happen going forward but we will get through this!
Have you thought about giving your tenants a bit of help in such hard times The Boy? You go on about how rich and successful you are. Giving them a bit of discount in relation to their rent would be a wonderful gesture. After all we are one country trying to work together to eradicate this scourge.
There's a number of reasons why house prices could drop. Unemployment? Kiwisaver balances taking a 10 - 20% hit. How many Air BNB's will return to the rental pool or housing stock? How many people on temporary work visas will find themselves out of work and on the next plane out of here, not to be replaced for some time? 160,000 work Visas were granted the year to February 2020. -
Hi David, This has to be an April Fool's piece - right?
To quote: 'What was needed was time. We needed the economy to stay buoyant, employment levels to stay strong, and the housing market to hold up. Then over the course of the next two or three years, the FHBs could bed themselves in and see some equity built up in their homes. And it was looking good that we might get there.'
You know that this Mantra is said at the top of every BOOM, just as they realize it's all about to go BUST?
And this sentence 'And it was looking good that we might get there.' Really should have been, 'And it was looking good that we might have just got away with it.' IE being on the right side of a typical boom and bust cycle that was inevitably going to happen.
What everyone in a bad position needs to pray for that is is so bad that it affects everyone everywhere, especially including the banks, the politicians - everyone.
Only then will you have some safety otherwise the banks will pick you off one by one. Your strength will be in your numbers.
You want it so bad, not just you are in negative equity but so are the banks.
If you want change so this is never repeated on your children or grandchildren, and that includes paying for the present propping up of the status quo for a rinse and repeat, then No One should be talking about property prices going up.
Agreed.
The writer had every chance to become informed. In-house, even.
Either chose not to, or was influenced in-house not to, or was incapable of cranially challenging the fact that the Emperor was claimed to be dressed. There are a lot who fall into that category.
Dale! You are the only one that got it... It's an April fools article.
'Then over the course of the next two or three years, the FHBs could bed themselves in and see some equity built up in their homes'
Well how would they see equity built up? Only through the next lot of mugs taking on MORE DEBT.
Who would borrow money to purchase something that produces nothing, rots into the ground and provides negative earnings (after ALL expenses) every single year guaranteed. Yes it can work out spectacularly if you are not left holding the baby but it requires the greater fool to come in behind you and thank god this country has an unlimited supply spurred on by Bindi and the media in general not to mention the banks.
DTI restrictions were the answer, but alas, by the time they were mooted it was too late. I have sympathy for the FHBs that sat on the sideline knowing this was an unsustainable bubble but who finally gave in, in order to move on in their lives. I was almost one of them!
I did, sadly. But this wasn't meant to be a capital gain generating machine and we were planning on being here for another five years until kids/schools become a thing. If we are lucky, we will be able to ride it out. But I fail to understand why property investors who have been living off the pig's back and pushing up prices for years get the same relief as FHBs who bought houses at super-normal prices because they needed somewhere stable to live and start a family.
This is a stupid article. The only thing that more time would have done is sucked more victims onto the bottom rungs of the property ponzi and LVRs have saved countless more from an even worse fate.
And it is a ponzi scheme, some of us have been pointing it out until we were blue in the face. For years.
There ought to be prison time for Norwell, Alexander, Church, Fong, Gibson and the rest of the crooked property/media brigade. These people are the very worst of society. Scum.
Regulations need to be bought in to ensure that it never happens again. Including DTIs.
And no bail outs. Some of us were smart enough to see the insanity for what it really was.
Banks run on "as long as nothing goes wrong"
But every 7-10 years something big ALWAYS goes wrong and do banks pay for it? No.
People cannot afford things, which is why we have credit.
How about if we asked WHY they cannot afford things we keep dangling in front of them as desirable?
Oh dear, cannot ask naughty questions like WHY can we?
Then we might get into looking at labour power now v 1980, or % of GDP consumers are borrowing.
But it's all good and "affordable" as long as unemployment does not go up or interest rates and of course no one wanted to discuss those nasty recurring things for last 7 years did they??
We never going to get it David, any respective govt at the helm recognise this, the wealth creation Psyche is long already established to override any quality of life, investment in productive learning for country future & healthcare systems. No productive young minds of this country are willing to enslave for such Wealth seeking all the time as oppose to Well-being, so the moving out is just natural reaction to it. I knew some is highly leveraged, enticed by all devils advocate out there. But, hell.. I can start to smell danger when during Nat co govt. - the resistance was soo high to use the DTI, relax LVR, no CGT.. read my lips, the signs are everywhere - Let the bus run .. down the hill with kids onboard.. no need to breath tested the driver, no need to check the brake, hey it's a new bus! - the rest? will be history in the making..
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