News articles
Browse articles
by date
Buy a beach house and help a charity
31 Jul 2009: Bidding at a charity auction for an Auckland beach house started this week at $1 and by yesterday had reached $40,030. read more >>
House haulers fighting demolition controls
31 Jul 2009: Demolition controls on thousands of early homes in traditional working class suburbs such as Ponsonby, Grey Lynn and Mt Eden are being challenged in court by the Heavy Haulage Association. read more >>
House haulers fighting demolition controls
31 Jul 2009: Demolition controls on thousands of early homes in traditional working class suburbs such as Ponsonby, Grey Lynn and Mt Eden are being challenged in court by the Heavy Haulage Association. read more >>
Property price plunge predictions ridiculous, says economist
30 Jul 2009: With the housing market seeming to have easily fended off the worst predictions of its fall, at least for now, the doomsayers have come in for some derision. read more >>
Builders pin hopes on spring as consents fall
30 Jul 2009: The number of new houses being built in New Zealand is still falling and many builders have little work booked. read more >>
New law to speed up building consents passed
30 Jul 2009: Parliament last night passed a law to speed up the building consent process and reduce costs for projects where multiple similar buildings are erected. read more >>
Australian property market 'recovering'
30 Jul 2009: New data shows the Australian housing market has seen its strongest growth since the financial crisis took hold. read more >>
Hard times force landlords to be flexible
29 Jul 2009: A bleak outlook on city-centre rents and vacancies has prompted Goldman Sachs JBWere to take a dimmer view of the commercial real estate market. read more >>
Buildings consents up 3pc in June
29 Jul 2009: The value of non-residential building consents issued in June was the lowest monthly figure since September 2007, at $307 million, Statistics New Zealand (SNZ) says. read more >>
Real estate revamp aims to lift standards
28 Jul 2009: Rules governing about 70,000 house sales annually will change in three months when the new Real Estate Agents Authority opens. read more >>
Years of leaks in Housing NZ apartment make it uninhabitable
27 Jul 2009: Housing New Zealand has stopped tenanting a leaky unit in the defective Hobson Gardens. read more >>
Early action saves your home
27 Jul 2009: Fiscally pressured property owners are losing their homes in bank fire sales because they leave it too late to fight back. Terralink figures show April mortgagee sales reached a new peak of 251, up from 201 in March and 90 a year ago. read more >>
New REINZ sale and purchase agreement enters the market
27 Jul 2009: A new plain English Sale and Purchase form has been developed by the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) which will be available to vendors and purchasers this week. REINZ chief executive Christine Le Cren says the form has taken around seven months to prepare and should help all parties involved in property transactions. read more >>
10 homes a day taken by banks
26 Jul 2009: Mortgagee sales are soaring, with one expert predicting almost 10 homes a day will be taken by banks. With mortgagee sales predicted to hit 250 a month, struggling homeowners are being urged to front up to their bank manager. read more >>
Multiple-house owners facing hard times
26 Jul 2009: 'Buy a few investment properties. The rent will pay the mortgage, then later you can enjoy the capital gain'. read more >>
Kiwis sold on idea of DIY home sal
26 Jul 2009: The recession is thought to be behind a sharp increase in the number of homeowners selling their properties privately. read more >>
Ex-estate agent charged over $10m property scam
24 Jul 2009: The Serious Fraud Office has charged a man allegedly involved in an elaborate $10 million property scam which saw him banned as a real estate agent for life. read more >>
Rental prices dropping, says real estate company
23 Jul 2009: Rental prices are dropping as cash-strapped tenants downsize, crowd in with flatmates, or shift back home. read more >>
Prices slashed for luxury Sentinel apartments
22 Jul 2009: Some luxury apartments in the North Shore's tallest tower are reselling for much less than their original asking price. read more >>
Opposition probe into banks of no value - Key
21 Jul 2009: Parliament's left-leaning parties are holding their own inquiry into banks' profits but the Government says it is a waste of time. read more >>
Labour fears for leaky homes
16 Jul 2009: Labour MP Phil Twyford fears the new Super City will abandon leaky-house victims and escape claims worth millions of dollars. read more >>
New player looks to cash in on slump
15 Jul 2009: A new real estate business has been formed to buy properties at what it sees should be the bottom of the market. read more >>
Loan scheme extension to aid first-home buyers
14 Jul 2009: Lending limits for "Welcome Home" loans for first home buyers look set to increase next month, opening the scheme up to low-income home-buyers in parts of Auckland and Tauranga for the first time in several years. read more >>
Living in the arms of Mother Earth
14 Jul 2009: Increasing the demand for homes made from a repackaging of papatuanuku, the earth, is what a low-cost housing project in the Far North hopes to achieve. read more >>
Manukau mayor eyes housing boost
14 Jul 2009: Manukau City Council has started talks with Government and non-profit agencies aimed at large-scale housing projects to kick-start the city's depressed house-building industry. read more >>
Dairy farm prices drop by 20 per cent in a month
14 Jul 2009: Dairy farms are suffering multimillion-dollar price drops and prices fell by 20 per cent in the past month alone, latest figures show read more >>
Jeweller to put homes on cours
14 Jul 2009: Jeweller Michael Hill has been given the green light to begin developing an exclusive 17-lot luxury subdivision at his Arrowtown golf course The Hills. read more >>
Apartments selling fast: agency
14 Jul 2009: Apartment specialist City Sales says the Auckland market is very active and it sold 10 apartments at or soon after its auction last month. read more >>
Double loan trouble
12 Jul 2009: Cash-strapped investors selling up are getting a nasty shock when hardball banks won't discharge their mortgage - or take their sale profits as a condition. read more >>
Official interest rates and mortgage rates compared worldwide
8 Jul 2009: We look at how official interest rates and mortgage rates compare in NZ and worldwide. read more >>
Key open to Reserve Bank advice on rates
8 Jul 2009: The Government will consider any Reserve Bank proposals on how to get banks to trim floating mortgage rates - which the central bank has again said appear to be "unusually high" - Prime Minister John Key said yesterday. read more >>
Auckland needs more houses, different story elsewhere: ANZ
7 Jul 2009: Demand could push up house prices and rents in Auckland, but areas outside the main centres have an overhang of supply, the ANZ bank says. read more >>
House-price stability on the way back
6 Jul 2009: The drop in house values slowed in the year to June, says QV Valuations, though its latest survey shows mixed opinions where the market will go over the coming months. read more >>
Google unveils NZ real estate site
6 Jul 2009: Global tech giant Google has unveiled its latest weapon to take over all aspects of the internet, with today's launch of a New Zealand real estate mapping service. read more >>
House prices; The good news and the bad news.
4 Jul 2009: A looming demand for new dwellings and a predicted spring sales recovery are just some of the hopeful signs emerging for the housing sector this week. The sector, picked by some to be hammered by a 30 per cent chop, is giving off mixed messages: still depressed but beginning to exhibit recovery signals. read more >>
Renovations beat the recession
4 Jul 2009: Many homeowners in top suburbs are settling for million-dollar renovations instead of buying new houses in the economic downturn. read more >>
Recovery? Don't bet the house on it
4 Jul 2009: A spring recovery or a year in the doldrums? read more >>
'Golden Autumn' continues for Auckland house sales: Barfoots
3 Jul 2009: Auckland's biggest real estate firm says the region's "golden autumn" for property sales continued through June, with sales up 5.8 per cent from the month before, and 54.9 per cent on the same month last year. read more >>
Construction tipped to rebuild by 2011
3 Jul 2009: Building costs in the $12 billion construction sector are falling and the industry could be in for a recovery by 2011, says the Institute of Economic Research (NZIER). read more >>
Hammer busy at property auctions
2 Jul 2009: Interest in property auctions appears to be picking up again read more >>
Housing Market could bloom in spring says Website
1 Jul 2009: A June snapshot of the residential property market showed stability returning, says the website Realestate.co.nz. read more >>