Foreign fears over-hyped: Alexander

At most, 5.6% of New Zealand house sales go to foreign buyers who do not plan to live in this country, BNZ chief economist Tony Alexander says.

Thursday, March 14th 2013, 12:00AM 2 Comments

by The Landlord

He asked respondents to his regular BNZ-REINZ Residential Market Survey who was buying property.

He found that nationwide, 24% of sales are to first-home buyers, 19% to investors, and 9% to people offshore.

First-home buyers were the most dominant in Wellington, where they made up 32% of the market, compared to 23% in Auckland and 19% in Christchurch.

Of the foreign buyers, most were British (18%), followed by Chinese (15%) and Australian (14%).

Alexander says: “In Auckland the proportion of sales to people living offshore is 11%. Of that 19% are to people living in China, 18% the UK, and 15% Australia. That means just 2.1% of Auckland house sales are to people living in China, 2% to people in the UK, and 1.7% to people in Australia.”

He said the survey results did not back up anecdotes about Auckland properties being snapped up by Chinese buyers.

“Also, agents note that nationwide at least 69% of buyers from the UK plan shifting to NZ, 37% of buyers in China plan doing so, and 51% of buyers in Australia also plan to shift here. Taken all up that means at most 5.6% (but perhaps as low as 4%) of all dwelling sales are to people offshore not planning to shift to NZ.”

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Comments from our readers

On 15 March 2013 at 10:35 pm Kris said:
Interesting where they get these statistics, I've bought three houses in NZ from Australia in the last few years and no one has ever asked me if I intended to shift there.
On 9 April 2013 at 10:27 pm David Houghton said:
This BNZ survey is no better than anecdotal evidence . Are the agents going to reply in any other way than in their own best interests. The banks also want to keep the current market going.
We must have proper documentation on house purchases which is accurate

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