June 11th, 2023Kyle’s Rant…
I bought my first house in the early nineties when I was a young fella in my twenties. I had had a bit of bad luck with employment and was bouncing around on a lot of low paying boats and ships, when finally, I got the call.
After years applying to the Auckland tugboat company Seatow, I finally got a gig as a deckhand. On the initial voyage the First Mate made a huge mistake which almost cost me my life, it involved releasing a large portion of giant anchor chain with me in the anchor locker. Things got fixed up without red tape and litigation in those days, I was promoted to the First Mate position. And he was carted off to hospital with a busted nose courtesy of the Chief Engineer.
Long story short is that I was finally on a good solid wage so was able to take on a mortgage, but with no deposit had to borrow from my dad the tidy sum of $5,000.
Whether it being that dad was a smartarse or wanted to further my education from the school of hard knocks, he agreed to lend me the money. The deal was made on the proviso I paid him back the sum of $10,000 within 12 months, yes, the bank of Dad had strict unbreakable terms.
My house cost me $45,000 it was in a neighbourhood sprinkled with gangs and wild dogs, but I didn’t care. The salary that I was earning was double my debt $90,000, can you imagine that debt to salary ratio now?
They were definitely the good old days, fast forward to now and the property prices are through the roof, while the wages have stagnated and been negotiated down with the weakening of unions. You just have to look at this edition’s properties, which is in fact the answer to the question, when is it the right time to buy?
The right time to buy is as soon as you can afford it, since records began in old blighty property prices have pushed up 10% per annum. Sure, sometimes they drop and sometimes they sit, but as you can see with the hindsight of the last few years they go up with a wallop.
If I was to give advice around the property market through personal experience I would point to my a close relative who sold a home back in June of 1987. They decided to play the money on the stock market and those with long memories (older folk) will remember what happened a couple of months later in 1987. It was the day that would come to be known as “Black Tuesday” a global, sudden, severe, and largely unexpected stock market crash which occurred October 19, 1987.
They lost the lot and were because of age never able to recover their situation, so my conservative and sage advice is that if you can get on the merry-go-round that is the property market get on. And once your on, stay on and what ever you do buy and sell in the same market. Don’t get off for a breather or because you have seen another bright shinny way to pull some cash.
Real estate rant over…
