Dr Don Brash: Why get on the housing ladder?

Almost since I returned to New Zealand from nine years abroad in 1971, there has been a widespread assumption that house prices always go up, if not every single year then almost every single year. And that those prices would rise faster than general inflation and faster than income growth.

As a result of that widespread belief, it was taken as a self-evident truth that the most important financial decision a young person could make was to “get on the property ladder” by borrowing as much money as the bank – the commercial bank or the bank of Mum and Dad – would lend to buy as much house as possible.