Picky buyers sit tight
Monday 1 November 2004
Returning Kiwis may need strong persuasion to spend their yen and pounds on real estate. GILL SOUTH reports.
By The Landlord
If you are planning to sell your house in the pre-Christmas season, you should know about a hard-to-please group of buyers out there. Be warned, they will wait patiently - up to 12 months - for vendors to get really desperate before making an offer, and they are looking for bargains.This recalcitrant bunch can be separated into three groups:
People returning from overseas with their foreign currency;
Baby boomers looking for investment properties for their retirement, who do not expect to buy until the next property cycle;
Independent thinkers who want to avoid the enormous mortgages which they think have restricted their friends' lives.
Would-be buyers who arrived within the last year with British pounds, US dollars or another foreign currency are not happy. When they got here the dollar was higher than they expected so they didn't convert their money, expecting the dollar to fall.
But, instead of going down, the NZ dollar is rising, hitting a historic high this week of US71.51 cents, and there is no end in sight.
Read More - Opens in a new window
Commenting is closed
House Prices
No stopping Capital price rises
There’s no sign of a slow-down in Wellington’s property prices with Trade Me Property’s latest data showing that asking prices continue to rise solidly.
Commercial
Demand challenges for commercial sector
Vacancy rates in the commercial property sector are set to increase as changing economic conditions dampen demand.
Mortgages
LVR loosening likely - ANZ
LVR restrictions were never meant to be a permanent feature of New Zealand’s housing market and ANZ economists argue that some further relaxing of them could soon be on the cards.
