A while back I posted on the fact that the median income earning household in New Zealand literally cannot afford the median priced house.
Well, it gets better. In today’s newspaper (Otago Daily Times) we read that NZ homes have now become literally the least affordable in the entire world, based on NZ incomes.
The findings come from a survey of the world’s six most expensive housing markets.
Demographia, the international survey business run by Hugh Pavletich, of Christchurch, and Wendell Cox, of the United States, released its fourth annual report showing New Zealand had slipped drastically on an international scale.
The United States, Australia, Britain, Ireland, Canada and New Zealand were studied and the results revealed house hunters here are in the most hopeless position, earning so little, yet facing astronomical property prices.
Wages are so low and house prices are so excessive that it takes 18 years and six months of a household’s entire annual income to afford a home before food and living expenses, Demographia found.
That’s 18 years and six months of not eating or having electricity, telephone or running water, pouring every single cent of income into paying for a house. How does that compare with the other five most expensive countries? Like this (these figures are from the front page of the print edition): If you are looking for houses in affordable price then do visit AquaLib .
New Zealand: 18 years, 6 months
Australia: 17 years, 9 months
Britain: 14 years, 1 month
Ireland: 9 years, 6 months
USA: 8 years, 3 months (This is where we plan on moving to)
Canada: 7 years, 9 months
We can’t wait to get out.