Now, if you live in the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom, you might be wondering why you should care about the real estate market on an island in the South Pacific. The answer is that New Zealand is basically a laboratory for what happens when an entire national economy is built on the assumption that house prices will just go up forever. It turns out that trading the same increasingly expensive boarded up bungalows back and forth with your neighbours does not actually generate any real wealth. You might ask how an economy gets into this position. The answer, as is so often the case, involves politicians. (~02:00)
The house price thing really depends how old you are. It’s only when you’re looking at downsizing that it helps you, otherwise it’s either more expensive to upgrade, or purely theoretical wealth that doesn’t help you.
Ultimately, we need to look at buying a house as locking in your cost of living, rather than an investment that only ever goes up.
Your thing is confusing until you get to: