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Interest rates drive prices down: Westpac

Thursday 20th of February 2014

Dominick Stephens said data from QV and REINZ confirmed the beginning of a trend.

He said the fall in sales was most noticeable in the cheaper end of the market and had hit all regions except Queenstown.

Stephens said the price increases of recent years had been primarily driven by low interest rates, which made houses more valuable to property investors.

“The investment value of a given property is sensitive to interest rates – the more cheaply an investor can borrow, the higher the price he/she can pay for a house while still realising a profit at a given level of rents. When interest rates fell sharply in 2012, our Investment Value model rose sharply. This was a valuable signal of house price inflation to come.”

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