June 7, 2012

In real terms

Auckland’s housing prices just hit a new record, says Stuff.  The average (?median, ?mean) price in May according to Barfoot & Thompson was $582285, higher than their reported 2007 peak of $538000. But the dollars are smaller than they were back in 2007.

If you bought a house for $538000 in 2007 dollars and sold it for $582285 in 2012 dollars, you would have made a loss of about $25000 2007 dollars before legal and bank costs.  And with 20% deposit and 6% interest, you’d be paying more than $2500 each month for the privilege (and nearly $4000 for the first couple of years, when interest rates were up at 10%)

 

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »