What Do Meghan Markle and NZ Property Prices Have In Common
I like to think I am immune to those Woman’s Weekly articles about Meghan and Harry.
The truth is I secretly have a quick read. Does Meghan really love Harry or is she just in it for the power. And even if she is just a very good actor, does that mean the marriage will end?
The end of the marriage would not really be the end because we will still demand their stories. Diana’s death was not the end – she didn’t die in our hearts and we demanded more of her…and we got it in the form of Will and Kate and now Harry and Meghan. Diana lives on. Why? Because we love the fairy tale – we believe in the happy ending, that ultimately good will prevail. Don’t believe me? Ask Tolkien, CS Lewis, and Peter Jackson.
How does that all relate to housing prices?
Kiwis just love to click on the latest housing price prediction. The latest research that scientifically points out why house price rises are over inflated or the forecast of a pending crash.
When will we stop lurching from sub-story to sub story and step back and enjoy the whole story from seed like beginnings to a triumphant conclusion? When will we appreciate there was a time that we lived quite primitively and over hundreds of years we started living in bigger and bigger groups that morphed into villages that grew into towns that became cities that became mega cities. The story of property prices is simply the story of Frodo and team and their wins and losses. Frodo gets a magical ring, Frodo gets chased, Frodo uses the ring and escapes, the ring weakens Frodo… That was not the story – the real story was how good ultimately triumphed over evil.
The real property story is how we live and work together.
How can we build great places that foster amazing harmony and community? How can a house be designed to create a better home, to build a better community? How can we provide affordable, healthy, stable housing for all? How can offices be thought of in new ways to make working so much more rewarding and motivating? How can we create places that inspire? That’s a story that has been going on for thousands of years and will never go away. We are humans – we want to relate to each other and we need places to do that.
Property is not a financial instrument.
It is fundamental to who we are as humans. We need it. Food is not a financial instrument – we die without it. I have a foody friend looking at buying some food businesses. He loves food and he is going to make a living from it. He can, because people need food, he makes great food, people will love it. As a result, he will create wealth.
Let’s not complicate property
We need property, if we provide property in places that people want to live and work, in formats that people will say yes to, we will see demand. Value growth is then inevitable. Interest rates, supply, availability of credit, immigration rules, new tenancy law are the exciting, scary, stressful and rewarding sub stories. They are not the main story. If we follow the main property story and find ways to contribute real value to the ultimate ending…I am confident we will be rewarded for it, and not just monetarily.
Over the coming weeks and months, I am going to delve into some sub-stories that are not being well considered, like climate change, tourism, the shifting economic centre of the world, population growth rates. If you have any questions about the New Zealand property market get in touch.