is vic there...

thought it would be interesting to see how many people have brought young kids with them in 'tightish' budgets.....has anyone given any thought to how the kids when they become adults will be able to afford to buy houses themselves....with the extremely high income to mortgage ratio's required being some of the highest in the 1st world ( altho' debatable if nz is 1st or 3rd world )........housing ownership is rapidly declining,faster - much faster than any other 1st world country.....the reason is low wages,high living costs and wooden sheds that are overpriced...........

happynz

Are you soliciting an answer or just making a rhetorical rant here, Vic?

lapsed kiwi

I think if you worry about that you'd drive yourself nuts. A lot can change in 15-20 years; is there any indication that our high interest rates (which are the main factor to the high mortgage:income ratio) will last until our kids are house-hunting? Or that UK's low ones will do similar? I'm not saying "live for the moment" but maybe "live for the next decade".

bourbon-biscuit

A lot can change. I didn't worry about how they'd afford a house in the UK- I just worried about how we would!

It's so ridiculous to say it's debatable whether NZ is a first or third world country- have you actually ever been to a third world country?

luvwelly

Too true bourbon biscuit

is vic there...

........southern india,belize and rwanda.............have you ?

so why is that less and less kiwi's are buying thier own homw compared to the uk,us,aus,canada, etc...........

P2L

Our daughter who is nearly 14, has figured this dilemna out already!!!

She is going to finish school here, go to Uni in NZ, save some money, bugger off back to the UK, do her 'OE' there, make her money (whilst living rent free at her God mothers house!!) and then move back here.

In other words, do as the 'locals' do

is vic there...

......yeah,but not all locals come back and the ones that do don't come back with alot of cash....sometimes due to student loans and sometimes due to the fact that the pubs & clubs in south ken and earls ct beckon.......

P2L

It might take them 20 years+ but they all come home in the end.

We have Kiwi friends in the UK who have been there for 37 years and they are intent on 'coming home' within the next 5 years

If you ask the Kiwis who post on here, many of them have stayed away longer they probably intended to

And as for South Kensington, have you checkwed out the Kiwi Kitchen?? The only Kiwi restaurant in London and it is gorgeous!!!

lardyl

on the second point, the first conversation I had with an expat about matters financial when we arrived was with a Brit who had been here over 10 years and his comment on high interest rates, etc was "welcome to the 3rd World". And when I asked him if he was joking, the answer was no, but he was a car salesman after all.......

On the first point, its all to do with savings and financial freedom for our kids.
I'd wager that the great majority of the ex-Pats here save (long term, not to pay irregular bills!) less (by way of pension, paying off mortgage, money in the bank, etc) than they did in the UK so the OP may be thinking about parents "helping their kids" with interest free loans, etc to get them over the hump and into a stable adult life s well as the well-publicised "affordability" of property in NZ. We are lucky though as our kids can do an open-ended european OE, whereas others would find it harder.......

For me that is a moot point along with the University thing.........

southerner

I'm interested in your sources here. As I understood it home ownership was still higher in NZ than most other countries. I can't imagine many young americans are buying property at the moment.

dlmckay

Did your parents assist you with your house buying? Mine certainly didn't! So when my kids come to deciding they're grown up enough for a house, then they can sort that out by themselves!

Hopefully I will have, as a good nuturing parent, taught them how to budget, study hard to get a well paid job and work hard in the profession of their choice... if so, they'll be in a better position than I was when I bought my first house

BEVS

Mine didn't either. In fact , they only managed to buy their first house a few years before I bought mine.
I bought & hung onto my first house through long hours & sheer hard work. I started with nothing, no furniture, tv, washine machine. None of that malarky. Just the house which was a complete bare boards, original 1920's 'doer upper'.
Clung on in there through recession and high interest rates with 3 jobs on the go. I still have the bits of 2nd hand furniture that was given to me at that time.


Cor ! Them was the days.


By the way Is Vic There... you have a little ole PM

is vic there...

no my parents certainly did not not help me...but the world is a very different place now....we have 2 kids under 11 and have 2 properties purchased 7 years and 20 years ago for them when they need them back in the uk....

dlmckay

I wish you were my parents...