My Feeling is the same as it was in 2012, If one needs a house to live in and it looks like one is in a position to finance it (with a buffer one would deem comfortable) then by all means, I would look to buy a home.
Attempting to “time the market” is at best difficult if not impossible. I can’t say what would happen in the next few years. For all I know, we could have a volcano blow up under Auckland or another equally unforeseen disruptive event and houses prices could then crash through the floor. At the moment, all the information I’ve seen around the place suggests that house prices are on track for single digit percentage gains across the board in New Zealand for the next year or two, but I reiterate, who the freak knows in this bizarre market, particularly given the distortive effects of a decade of seemingly endless and inefficiency encouraging “stimulus”
From an investor point of view, I am currently just adding into REITs and riding the current upward trend as REITs seem to present a better risk to reward ratio. I may look to buy a property, but it would probably around the Waikato Region.
On the broader economic and financial front, a sizeable double digit percentage correction in the global financial markets is in my mind well past overdue. Anecdotally, we seem to be in this “speculative blow off” stage where Taxi drivers are talking about property and shares… The so called speculative stage dare I say it has been going on a lot longer than would ordinarily historically occurred in a bubbly situation, I feel.
The markets have been unfazed by multiple “hits” that I would have thought would ordinarily spook the market, and this in turn has lead me to entertain the possibly we’re actually in a middle of a sustained secular bull market rather than the tip end of a bubble. Again, don’t know. Nothing makes any damned sense to me anymore… Fundamental analysis as an analysis method probably should be consigned to the trash heap. (In my honest and frank opinion, as a broad sweeping generalization, Economics is largely a sham these days, the discipline is in dis-repute in my eyes)