A home loan lender ME has launched a new property search tool claiming to ‘flip house hunting on its head’... The closer to Antarctica, the hotter the property market gets...
ME releases new property search tool
ME has launched property search tool, Life&Loan, that allows home buyers to search by lifestyle and affordability preferences.
Claiming to ‘flip house hunting on its head’, the tool suggests real-time property listings based on the lifestyle buyers like to live followed by borrowing power, and in areas they may not have considered.
ME head of home loans, Patrick Nolan, said “the Bank designed the tool with first home buyers in mind, many of whom are anxious about sacrificing their lifestyle in order to buy a home.”
Research by ME showed 77% of people would make compromises to realise their ‘dream home’.
The closer to Antarctica, the hotter the property market gets
(Bloomberg) -- Move over Sydney and Auckland, there's a hotter property market in the southern hemisphere and it's only 1,500 miles from Antarctica.
In Queenstown, New Zealand's adventure tourism mecca and playground for the rich and famous, house prices rocketed 31 percent in the year through September to an average price of NZ$959,000 ($690,000). That's twice the 15 percent rate of increase in Auckland, the nation's largest city. In Sydney, prices climbed a mere 10 percent.
Queenstown, deep in New Zealand's southern alpine region, has become one of the nation's most unaffordable places as more buyers depart the overheated Auckland market, where prices have almost doubled the past nine years. The central bank's steps in 2015 to curb lending to investors in the northern city spurred many to look elsewhere while other home-owners have taken advantage of surging values by selling, or refinancing amid record-low borrowing costs, giving them the cash to look south.
Aucklanders ``can get equity out of their homes more easily than they could five years ago,'' Gail Hudson, a Queenstown realtor, said in an interview. ``They’ve seen it as an opportune time to take some money out and buy here.''
The average house price in Auckland rose to over NZ$1 million in August, according to Quotable Value New Zealand. Prices have also soared more than 20 percent the past year in the North Island cities of Hamilton, Tauranga and Wellington as investor demand spilled out of Auckland.
ME has launched property search tool, Life&Loan, that allows home buyers to search by lifestyle and affordability preferences.
Claiming to ‘flip house hunting on its head’, the tool suggests real-time property listings based on the lifestyle buyers like to live followed by borrowing power, and in areas they may not have considered.
ME head of home loans, Patrick Nolan, said “the Bank designed the tool with first home buyers in mind, many of whom are anxious about sacrificing their lifestyle in order to buy a home.”
Research by ME showed 77% of people would make compromises to realise their ‘dream home’.
The closer to Antarctica, the hotter the property market gets
(Bloomberg) -- Move over Sydney and Auckland, there's a hotter property market in the southern hemisphere and it's only 1,500 miles from Antarctica.
In Queenstown, New Zealand's adventure tourism mecca and playground for the rich and famous, house prices rocketed 31 percent in the year through September to an average price of NZ$959,000 ($690,000). That's twice the 15 percent rate of increase in Auckland, the nation's largest city. In Sydney, prices climbed a mere 10 percent.
Queenstown, deep in New Zealand's southern alpine region, has become one of the nation's most unaffordable places as more buyers depart the overheated Auckland market, where prices have almost doubled the past nine years. The central bank's steps in 2015 to curb lending to investors in the northern city spurred many to look elsewhere while other home-owners have taken advantage of surging values by selling, or refinancing amid record-low borrowing costs, giving them the cash to look south.
Aucklanders ``can get equity out of their homes more easily than they could five years ago,'' Gail Hudson, a Queenstown realtor, said in an interview. ``They’ve seen it as an opportune time to take some money out and buy here.''
The average house price in Auckland rose to over NZ$1 million in August, according to Quotable Value New Zealand. Prices have also soared more than 20 percent the past year in the North Island cities of Hamilton, Tauranga and Wellington as investor demand spilled out of Auckland.
