Then those top economists are idiots the title economist is a bit of a pejorative so , as far as I ' m concerned your retort is fairly humorous . Not surprisingly , economists have a way of actually measuring housing a f fordabilitysustainability . It ' s called the median multiple , which sits at 10 x annual pay for Auckland and 6 x annual pay for the regions , AKA not Auckland . Anything above 5 x is deemed unaffordableunsustainable . New Zealand , visavis property speculatorsinvestors engaged in Auckland ' s market at current valuation , face two ways forward 1 keep the foreign capital , that can afford outsized housing costs , flowing into New Zealandor 2 New Zealand wide wage inflation that allows housing costs to say in a sustainable range . Those are really the only two positive options . The third possibilityprobability , that currently invested speculatorsinvestors will plug their ears and shout so they don ' t have to hear , is that the property market , at least in Auckland , will crash and the seismic property appreciation wave traveling outwards will be stopped in its tracks . Here ' s what I think is going to be the precipitating event exchange rates . Right now , the Yuan is fixed to the US dollar and the NZ $ is over valued because of it . If just one of the three legs of that stool gets punched out , it ' s all over . China seems to be particularly unsuccessful in stemming the tide of outflowing capital I ' ve got my suspicions that they ' re trying to paper over their own internal property debt bubble by investing wholesale in foreign property , a component of which involves property syndicates in New Zealand . The end result is that demand reduction will need to be implemented internally in New Zealand and we all know that ' s not going to happen . A lower NZ $ exchange rate will only increase the flood of overseas investors , which could very well achieve the impossible selfgovernanceregulation that seems to be always just out of the grasp of most New Zealand politicians . A lowering of either the Yuan China is under pressure to decouple or the US dollar will have the impact of lowering overseas property investment . How badly that will go for New Zealand largely depends on how overleveraged the average New Zealand property investorspeculator is .