Experts scoff at claims of crisis in rent market
An Auckland property manager is warning of a looming rental housing crisis - but his claim has been rejected by market watchers.Wayne Boberg of property management business Bobergs First National tracks the rental and houses for-sale...

Questions hover over $160m ASB block
The planned $160 million ASB headquarters should be a good deal for its developer and landlord but there are some concerns, an analyst says.Jason Lindsay, research analyst at Credit Suisse, said the $1.8 billion Kiwi Income Property...

Work starts on Bacchus leak problems
Teak Construction is working on the leaky 51-unit Bacchus apartments and retail block on the North Shore.The luxury $6 million Browns Bay block, not far from the waterfront, suffered extensive problems after Multiplex Constructions...

No more ground rent for owners
Land at one of New Zealand's largest high-density housing estates has been converted from leasehold to freehold title.Beaumont Partners, directed by Auckland developer Nigel McKenna, has sold land at the 258-unit Beaumont Quarter...

Plea to delay Dubai repayments
DUBAI - Dubai World, the state-owned holding company in talks to renegotiate about US$26 billion ($37 billion) of debt, will ask banks for permission to delay loan repayments when it presents a plan to creditors this month, said three...

Toughest sell starts at home
The hardest part of the process of selling your home is letting go. Once you have done that, the rolling-up-your-sleeves process is just a list of tasks. You can do this two ways: 1. Hold on to your house as your own precious...

Successful mission requires special agent
Trust is to the successful sale of a house as location is to buying one."Find an agent you implicitly trust," urges Ray White Ponsonby manager Simon Damerell, "backed by a strong, ethical company that's been around for some time....

Personal savings present savvy loan option
Before you start house-hunting, you need to figure out how much you can afford to borrow. Part of those discussions with the bank will involve the structure a mortgage might take.One of the more innovative is the Bank of New Zealand's...

So you want to live in: Otumoetai
Otumoetai is a spread-out Tauranga suburb, taking in the Pillans Point, Cherrywood, Bureta, Brookfield and Bellevue areas. It's popular with both young families and older, retired folk.Prior to the 1950s, the Otumoetai peninsula...

So you want to live in: Epsom
Epsom is one of Auckland's oldest suburbs and unlike modern-day pockets of affluence like Parnell and Ponsonby, which have seen their days of workers' cottages and slums, Epsom has always been considered largely well-heeled. Not that...

So you want to live in: Beach Haven
At off-peak traffic times, the trip across the Harbour Bridge to Beach Haven takes only a few minutes. It's a far cry from the days when groceries had to be delivered by wheelbarrow.Beach Haven, past Birkenhead on Mokoia Rd, was...

Making cents
Ever confused by the stream of announcements on house prices and how they're rising or falling? At times, it almost seems prices are going up one week and falling the next. What's going on here?It all comes down to how you read...

Historic foundation of lasting value
The life of the registered valuer is often lived in the shadows of property transactions, and can therefore be mistaken to be a profession in its infancy. Actually, New Zealand's valuation profession was formalised by The Valuers...

Suburbs meet varied needs
Although the Auckland property market showed signs of recovery at the end of last year, the picture is much more complex than that, according to four top-selling real estate agents. Their experiences show marked variations in sales...

No boom equals no gloom
The world has just experienced its greatest financial crisis since the 1930s, with international credit availability all but ceasing for a period late in 2008. Economies have had their deepest recessions in decades, unemployment rates...

Trying times
When Auckland, followed by Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin, began to wade out of the residential property mire in the middle half of 2009, the provincial cities and towns waited patiently for their turn. But it never really came.The...

Top of the plots
Eat your heart out, Remuera. The tree-lined streets of Auckland's most noted, refined suburb - home to the city's moneyed for generation upon generation - have, for the moment, taken a back seat to three property-league upstarts.Herne...

Worlds collide in extreme sales
In Auckland, you'll need $40,000 or so as a deposit to scrape into some suburbs at entry level. In Murupara, the same cheque will buy you the whole house.The run-down timber town in the central North Island - less than an hour's...

Low supply fuels wild ride in 2009
If 2008 was the year many New Zealand homeowners discovered they shouldn't believe the fairy tales of ever-increasing values, 2009 found them peering out of the bunker and questioning that new-found wisdom.The year was surprisingly...

Property values steadily increase then level out
Property values have levelled out in most parts of the country in the past few months, and the national average is up from last year, the latest QV index shows.Results from the QV residential property indices released yesterday...