The Covid crisis is coming for first home buyers with mountains of mortgage debt

We needed a reasonable period of time to allow the recent surging wave of highly geared first home buyers to get financially comfortable. We didn’t get it, writes David Hargreaves of interest.co.nz. 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 … Read more

Has the Official Cash Rate cut re-lit the house market fuse?

It already looked like the housing market could take off again, and then the Reserve Bank went and made that a whole lot more likely. David Hargreaves analyses the forecasts, in this piece originally published on Interest.co.nz. It may seem the height of absurdity to talk about the possibility of the house market taking off … Read more

KiwiBuild’s teething problems are no reason to bin the entire thing

Sure, KiwiBuild has gotten off to a rocky start, but it’s far from a disaster, argues interest.co.nz’s David Hargreaves. In fact, with a few simple tweaks, it could even become a success. Some people can be pretty quick to call something a failure. In the eyes of some this government’s flagship KiwiBuild policy already appears … Read more