Houses are getting more and more expensive these days, yet they are more and more important. Secondary schools have since forever had limits on who can apply and enroll in the school roll. This is normally done by partitioning the city into “zones” where students in the correct zones are automatically accepted into the school.

Clearly some schools are better than the others.

Schools like Westlake Boys/Girls High School continually dominate rankings and achievements, especially on the North Shore. Why send your kid to Birkenhead College when there’s a chance for them to go to Westlake? And that is the thought of many parents nowadays as they either try to cheat the system (“Hey can I borrow your letterbox?”) to even purchasing a house that is in-zone in order to secure their child’s education. Even though education is no guarantee of success, it definitely helps a lot and I can see why parents are willing to go above and beyond for their kids. I recently stumbled over a Westlake Boys High School zoning information page and this reflects my sentiments exactly. There is a huge influx of demand for such properties as families seek to have their kids receive a very good education.  I applaud them but at the same time I realise how difficult it must be for those who do not even have the privilege to own their own home. Such is life, I guess we all have something to strive for.

Houses in these areas are undoubtedly flash and honestly, we’re all jealous of them (whether we like to admit it or not). If all their money is hard-earned, there’s nothing to hate. Let’s try to prosper as a nation together. If Auckland housing doesn’t fix itself, rent! Or save for an apartment. We need to take control of our own futures, while politics is important and lobbying, demonstrating, protesting has its merits, I believe the crux of this is entitlement. Let’s not be entitled and work hard and earn everything ourselves.

Seems as though prices are going back up again. With the recent release by LINZ that the majority of purchases are not from foreign buyers, it really puts a dent not only to the credibility of some parties (ahem Labour) but also raises the question… What really is driving Auckland’s housing “bubble”? Where is the money coming from?

Despite anecdotal evidence of foreigners buying up every property at every auction, the statistics show otherwise. Could there be other avenues to explain this? Possibly foreigners could be just incorporate companies and circumventing IRD number requirements that way. If not, we have to be wary at the types of restrictions the public is pressuring the government to implement – foreign purchasing restrictions, land tax and the already implemented IRD restriction is already signalling to the rest of the world that New Zealand is almost against foreign investment despite how ludicrous that sounds. Coupled with our large OIO rejections and now this scandal with Foreign trusts, it makes me wonder what’s going to be next and how attractive New Zealand will be in the eyes of foreign investment.

And YES we do need foreign investment. Our economy is quite reliant on it whether we like it or not. Unless we can suddenly generate intellectual property that vastly creates value on our primary production (see Comvita and Seadragon as huge proponents to this which is good) our country will not be wealthy and we will probably not survive. We need foreign expertise and investment in both financial capital and human capital.