2. ...Is Auckland suddenly more affordable? As someone who grew up there but currently living overseas, it’s news to me. A lot of my friends are saddled with large mortgages they could only get with help from their parents. In a low wage economy they will struggle to pay if interest rates rise from their historic lows.
NZ is terrific if you’ve got family wealth to fall back on, but without you’re doomed.
I wanted to stay, but in spite of graduating top of my computer science class, couldn’t find decently paid work.
I moved to Aus 5 years ago and immediately >doubled my salary, could afford a house, and lived in an exciting city instead of a low wage semi rural small town.
Australia of course has many problems of its own, and in particular, treats poor disadvantaged people terribly. But NZ is grim for everybody except the already well off property owning class.
Now I have a family and gonna be moving back to NZ, there isn't a chance in hell I would go to Auckland as the prices are out of control. The house I grew up in my parents bought for ~200k and sold for like ~600k, I recently checked and it last sold for 2.4m 2 years ago.
Prices are slowly coming down now that overseas buyers are barred from purchasing houses. But when you've had decades of housing prices going up and up its difficult for people to accept the house is worth less than when they bought it.
Theres many other problems causing housing prices to be high than just 'zoning'. The amount of effort to build your own house is absurd, people don't want to buy land and get an architect etc, too many rules and regulations, getting approval every step of the way takes forever. And the government is dragging its feet to get houses built themselves.
NZ as a whole doesn't have a declining population, and Auckland usually does not.