Home ownership

Press, 4 March 1981, Page 16

Home ownership

Sir, .—I suppose there is no reason why a Minister of Housing should associate house purchases with mortgages. However, for some of us they are inseparable. Since he has supplied, us (“The Press,” February 18) with statistics comparing the purchase prices of the average house in 1974 and 1979, I would be grateful if Mr Quigley could now provide us with the statistics of the number of years of average salary required to buy and service the mortgage of the average house ' in 1974 and 1979. Also, just to give us a longer term view of

the situation, could he provide these same statistics for, say, 1970 and 1965. — Yours, etc., . D. J. McARTHUR. February 19, 1981. - , [The Minister of Housing, Mr Quigley, replies: “Your corre- . j spondent D. J. McArthur asks ; j how many years salary is | required to buy and service a’ t' mortgage in 1974 and 1979 on | the average house. Unforf tunately there is no adequate recorded information on this. However, for Housing Corpora- . tion borrowers, in June, 1976,; the average proportion of average wage required to service a . Housing Corporation loan was 28.2 per cent; in September,’ 1978, the average proportion of average wage required was 28.6 per cent and in May, 1979, it was 21.6 per cent. It must be remembered that Housing Corporation borrowers are only a proportion of the number of people who, each year, in New Zealand raise mortgages. Your correspondent may also be in- . terested in the statistics on the „ relationship of the average ordinary time annual wage to the i average house sale price for <• the period 1965 to 1979. In .j .December, 1965, it took 4.57 ’ years of the average annual ordinary time wage to acquire the average property; in December, 1970, it took 4.32 years of the average wage; in June, 1974, it took 5.65 years of the average wage and in December, 1979, it took 3.65 years of the average ordinary time wage.”]