Lower prices, dropping interest rates and looser mortgage regulations are helping young buyers to enter the market, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin.

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‘Overly prescriptive’ loan checks on the scrapheap

While wage-earners are celebrating the arrival of tax cuts, however small they may be, prospective first-home buyers have been handed another small victory. From today, strict loan affordability regulations are gone from the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act (CCCFA), ending the spending checks that caused such an uproar when they were announced in December 2021. While the government is trumpeting its slashing of 11 pages of arduous, “overly prescriptive” checks, the regulations had already been eased significantly by the previous government in response to the outcry. Still, housing minister Chris Bishop says the change will put an end to “the immense stress caused by the screeds of information and disclosures” that first-home buyers had to provide under the old rules.

It’s likely that the impact will actually be most felt by non-mortgage borrowers, as the costs of compliance was having a “chilling effect” on lenders’ ability to offer smaller sums of up to $5,000, according to commerce and consumer affairs minister Andrew Bayly. Incidentally, the rule change has come too late for Aotea Finance, which received a warning this month after the Commerce Commission found it had failed to responsibly apply the affordability assessment criteria to new borrowers, Newsroom’s Andrew Bevin reports.

Affordability continuing to improve

The CCCFA changes add to the increasingly rosy picture for prospective first-home buyers over the past month. Already loan-to-value (LVR) ratios have been eased, allowing banks to issue more low-deposit mortgages, and signs are getting ever stronger that interest rates will tumble soon and fast. Interest’s latest first-home affordability report indicates that “home ownership for typical first home buyers has gone from being solidly in unaffordable territory at the start of the year to just marginally unaffordable in June,” writes the report’s author, Greg Ninness. The report compares bottom-quartile property sales with the median after-tax wages of 25-29 year-old couples, and considers the market unaffordable for first time buyers if a low-deposit mortgage would take up more than 40% of after-tax pay. Should the current trend continue, affordability at a national level will dip below the 40% threshold in the fourth quarter of this year, Ninness writes. “If that happens, it would be the first time that housing has been considered affordable for first home buyers at the national level since October 2021.”

Townhouse boom continues

When that young couple does move into their first home, chances are it’ll be a townhouse. New CoreLogic data shows how the townhouse market has exploded over the last decade. “The category, which made up just 6% of all new dwelling consents in 2012, now accounts for 45%,” reports Stuff’s Esther Taunton. “Since 2016, about 39,600 townhouses have been built across New Zealand. Of those, nearly 25,000 have been in Auckland – about 63% of the growth – and the city has about 38% of the country’s townhouses.” The Auckland unitary plan was behind that city’s townhouse boom, and the sweeping upzoning recently approved in Wellington, combined with Chris Bishop’s plan to loosen national zoning rules, mean the townhouse tap won’t be turned off anytime soon.

The majority of the new builds will no doubt mirror the boxy, characterless style of most contemporary townhouse developments, but there’s potential good news for those looking for a more heritage-inspired home: Christchurch developer Brooksfield is expanding into Auckland and Wellington. Director Vincent Holloway says Brooksfield’s philosophy is based on the idea that “density doesn’t need to be ugly”, reports the Herald. “Our biggest difference compared to everyone else in New Zealand is that we do strictly classical designs […] it is what the people want.”

Low-income families struggling to find rentals

For renters, especially low-income working families, the news is less positive. Research prepared for the Child Poverty Action Group shows that rental affordability for low-wage households has dropped across the country, “except for one- and two-bedroom homes in Auckland, four-bedroom homes in West Coast and two-, three-bedroom and overall availability in Canterbury”, writes RNZ’s Susan Edmunds. Report author Greg Waite says he welcomes recent regulatory changes that encourage the construction of smaller rental properties, but he believes NZ’s landlord-friendly tax regime (including the lack of a capital gains tax) will continue to restrict the number of affordable rental properties suitable for families.

The Green Party has called on the government to adopt its proposed solutions to the issue, including limiting rent increases and abandoning the no-cause eviction law. “Too many renters are afraid to ask for things to be fixed out of fear the landlord will hike the rent or kick them out,” the Greens’ open letter reads. “Your government’s proposed no-cause evictions undermine every other supposed right they have.”