gaz1277

Having read LOADS of articles and been on many a website looking at what the future holds in terms of the job market in NZ, nothing stands out as to growth in anyone one field/trade/occupation.

I am interested to know, for those that live in NZ, if you had your time again and could chose any occupation, what would have been your chosen profession in terms of satisfaction/hours/money/future growth etc??

Do many people change mid career for better jobs/money/living/standards?

Thanks

Justcol

You dont come to New Zealand if you want any of those things to improve in your life

simonsi

The answer to your question is 42.

Dustybin

A bit of building work going in christchurch....

Charismatic

If we knew that we’d be rolling around in money. Not much has changed in the time I’ve lived and worked in New Zealand. Short of an unlikely push for the government to modernise our industries (using whatever methods) I suspect real estate and houses will feature heavily in our future .

Jan n Neil

People under a certain age will not get the reference

neil

simonsi

I know, its as good as a secret handshake innit

Charismatic

Because we don’t know what books are?

crap coffee

cr@p I think (honestly).

fitzandindiana

We wondered about going into a spot of property developing instead of falling into the same jobs we do now. What is this sort of thing like in NZ at the moment, are houses selling at all?

Charismatic

Lots of houses, not much movement. Real estate will probably remain depressed or at very low growth rates until wages rise significantly. To be fair though a good business proposition is worth investing in regardless of the economic climate.

Linky to latest data: http://www.propertycommunity.com/pro...market-nz.html

Property may have had a it’s bubble now and I think people have realised that property can’t continue to outperform other investments forever. Hopefully pricing will remain flat until wages catch up and then expand at the same rate as the rest of the economy again (like the end of any asset bubble really ).

Dustybin

ahh but what is the question?

CarolineSwan

I think this depends on the area you live in. Houses where i am go fast, sometimes you see a sign go up and its sold within the first 2 weeks, obviously there are houses that sit forever, but you find they are the really old horrible ones that noone wants to live in, but all the new builds andf airly new ones are selling. also prices in this wee town have gone up quite a bit, used to be that they were under the price of houses in NP town but now they are on a par, and alot are selling for 500-600k, not bad atall. yup the 2 main estate agents here are doing really well

Charismatic

I agree entirely with you regarding location being important .

There are things the government have done in the short term to help stabilise the market (such as keeping interest rates very low and not doing a gains tax or other duty on property). However these are really short term measures, if you run an economy like this for a long time you’ll get runaway inflation (then we're all *****ed ).

I hate to spoil a good debate with factual data however by historical levels real estate still appears to be overvalued:

For the poor suckers who purchased at the top (sorry if that way you ) there is quite a debt overhang now that their asset has depreciated, which is fine as long as they bought their house as a place to live rather than an investment and are happy to continue living there (But not so good if your house is your biggest asset and you put everything into it).

We’ve had years of unprecedentedly low interest rates but as that 2.75% rate (at the moment) gets taken towards the historical average mean value I suspect we are going to see a lot of pain for those unable to reduce their mortgages to date. Banks hate foreclosures and will try anything to put them off as long as possible but for those struggling to pay even the interest on their mortgages already it’s not going to get any easier. Followed closely by those with debt overhangs who will think “I’m servicing a debt more than my house is worth, it’s getting increasingly expensive to service as interest rates rise and house prices and falling (maybe stagnant by then) so I’ll just declare myself bankrupt” (Which is rational at some point).

Another thing that came to my attention that is interesting is that the Australian owned banks are being very cautious about lending here and still feel edgy about the market, 40% of new mortgages issued this year have been issued by government backed Kiwi bank alone. Property prices have fallen 1.1% since March so we are far from out of the woods though the decline is gradual.

CarolineSwan

Our mortgage was from ANZ but have just this week switched to Kiwi bank