Are we riding for a fall?

Garry Schultze, Nick Gluyas and Christian MacMillan-Adams

Over the real-estate frenzy yet? The hairdresser has three renters. The dentist regrets being burnt in the last crash in the mid-1990s by selling up too fast. And the receptionist wonders whether to flick the family bungalow and trade down to free up cash after the kids all leave home.

Are you a long-term renter who despises debt? A wannabe homeowner waiting for the crash and saving desperately for a deposit? Just bought your first place and wondering if you will soon owe more than it's worth? Or did you buy 30 years ago and now regularly think, "We could never afford this now?"

Whatever the tenures or aspirations, as a nation our love affair with property shows little sign of abating.

Quotable Value figures for the year to May, released this week, show the national average price has risen 13.5 per cent to $298,448, topping off the longest sustained boom in 22 years. In every quarter of the last four years, house prices have risen, outstripping a record set in the late 1980s.

* Auckland now has so many landlords that finding a tenant is becoming increasingly difficult and rents have fallen.

* Property has spawned an entirely new arm of publishing with pumped-up glossy magazines to satisfy landlord newbies' desperate desire for more information and tips.

* Books crowd the new-release lists boasting of the benefits of negative gearing and telling why a trust should own the family home, and property investment expos converge on cavernous buildings at Greenlane.

In 2003, banking economists warned of an imminent disaster, yet the foolish who jumped in heedless of warnings made a killing. The boom started in 2001 and has sailed on with only a few blips since. Nationally, prices rose 22 per cent last year alone.

As a result, people feel richer, enticing them to spend more.

Yet housing is also costing us dearly.

A Centre for Housing Research document showed 22 per cent of Aucklanders spent 40 per cent or more of their net income on housing, whether that be on mortgages or in rent.

So is the market turning? Some warn that Auckland housing is poised to pop like a dot.com crash and prices in some sectors, such as the highly volatile apartment market, are predicted to fall by 30 per cent.

The investor: Garry Schultze



With a passion for travel and an eye on the future, residential investor Garry Schultze of Albany can attest to the benefits of owning a string of houses.

"I've travelled to 44 countries and my favourite place is Vancouver, but I also love South Africa," confesses Schultze, 50, who has funded his journeying from property.

"I've been a property investor since 1979. Property has treated me well, even though I haven't really got a dollar to rub together." Schultze is a little quirky about property: his family rent their large Albany lifestyle block home base, but he owns four other residential properties that are rented out.

A landlord who rents his own place from another landlord?

He can't see the point in owning his own house, but has an insatiable appetite to increase his portfolio of rental homes to get richer.

He and his partner own six residential properties - four at Albany and two at Gulf Harbour.

They are planning on providing for the future and giving their children the best financial start in life they can afford. "I buy residential property because I believe it's the most secure asset."

Schultze also works as a salesman at real estate investment specialist Merlot Property Investments, which sources houses for buyers then manages them as renters.

Home Buyer: Nick Gluyas

Nick Gluyas, 30, and just married in March, hopes to buy his first home in Meadowbank tomorrow.

"Fingers crossed," said Nick, an engineer, from his Penrose office.

Nick and wife Tania returned from Britain a year ago and have lived fairly frugally to save a deposit.

"We don't go out for dinner much. We haven't been back overseas and we don't take many holidays, so we already save a lot," Nick said.

The couple pay $360 a week to rent a two-bedroom St Heliers townhouse which loses the sun before noon.

They have their hearts set on a sunny place selling for around $500,000, at least 30 years old - to avoid leaky building syndrome - and with renovation potential.

"We'd hope to make it open-plan or knock a few walls out and increase the value that way," Nick said, adding that they had looked at up to five houses a weekend for months.

They fancied Meadowbank or Orakei, partly because their plans include kids and they like the schools. Once saddled with a mortgage - a good portion at a fixed rate and the rest floating - the couple's outgoings will double to about $700 a week.

They hope that from tomorrow, their days of renting will be over.

The Landlord: Christian MacMillan-Adams

When Christian MacMillan-Adams migrated to New Zealand from France, property was on her mind.

The interior designer, 61, originally from Scotland's west coast, had spent 13 years living near Gordes in the Luberon Valley, an area made famous by Peter Mayle's novel A Year In Provence.

There, she had applied her design skills to a wide range of homes and knew of property's intrinsic value.

So when she got to Auckland in 2003, financial security was a key ambition and she bought two properties in upmarket Remuera, one to live in, the other to renovate.

"The property at 19 Shera Rd was a rundown cottage," she says, "and I've transformed it into a four-bedroom, 3 1/2-bathroom home."

This property investor has done what Finance Minister Michael Cullen is asking of us all - planning for retirement. Once she sells the Shera Rd house, she will be comfortably off.

National Superannuation will not be the mainstay for this savvy, matter-of-fact, semi-retired widow.