Quote:
Originally Posted by brad850csi
Back in 2012 a normal first house at the affordable end of the spectrum would be $300-350k, like this one:
https://www.trademe.co.nz/property/r...e75cfd00c6ed7a
That carpet!! wow.
These were probably under valued as you could rent them out with a 100% mortgage and pay for the mortgage, council rates and insurance without paying for anything out of your pocket at all. I know - I did this 5 times 
Since then houses like that have ~doubled in price as you can see from that link while rents have gone up 15-20%, which now means as a landlord you've got to hope for further capital gains if you're buying now. Of course all of my mortgages on my rentals are pretty small now so I'm well sorted.
Confession - I didn't actually take the pictures on my street, my house is about 1km away and is relatively modest. I bought it in 2008 when I was 24. I made the decision in 2012 to buy some rental properties instead of moving into a nicer place for myself and it paid off fairly well for me. I bought the M6 with a car subsidy my company gave me and as celebration for paying off the mortgage on the house I live in. I'll do it up in a year or two and look to spend $1.5-2m on a house with a few acres of land (if you can be bothered looking it up, I am looking at Drury/Ramarama/Bombay area) I work in IT sales and combined I make about $300k a year with my girlfriend who works in IT distribution. I don't have any qualifications other than a drivers license and high school 
Minimum wage here is $16.50 and you get plenty of subsidies from the government if you have kids from outright cash per kid to housing subsidies and a bunch of other stuff. I just spent a week in Fiji and trust me, people aren't poor here by comparison! I'm sure there are parallels in the US where people don't have much money but still have iPhones, satellite/cable TV, 5 year old cars on big wheels etc etc.
The issue with housing currently is that people can be employed as a teacher, policeman, fireman etc and can't afford to buy a house in Auckland, but they can in the regions. So there is plenty of noise in the media about that. We don't have different pay grades for the area you live in and there are stories about people driving 100km or more per day to work in Auckland and live somewhere further out. I suspect however that worldwide the same issue exists in most big cities and that people have been used to not owning their own house for generations, this is especially the case in Europe. In NZ however the majority of people expect to own their house almost as a right at the moment. Perhaps that perception will change over the next 30 years.
I'm allowed to highjack my own thread aren't I? |
more or less same problems in major metro areas in US as well. The home I live in was worth about $600k back during the recession 10 years ago. Today with upgrades, it's worth twice at $1.2m.
Back on topic...I'm loving the M Performance diffuser. I'm thinking about buy one now. The thing is, the GC diffuser is already a very slick piece of carbon fiber. I just have a preference for the finned look:
