Business
Each week the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's how to detangle the housing situation and make the most of it. Hosted by Frances Cook.The housing market is one where there’s always winners and losers. Buyers want low prices, owners want high prices, so whatever market forces are at play someone usually ends up disappointed.The problem is right now, things are so uncertain.We do have early indicators to help us read the tea leaves. The latest figures are for March, which take us just six days into lockdown, and it’s already looking rough out there. National house sale data from the Real Estate Institute shows we’ve hit a nine year low, with the numbers of houses for sale down almost five percent. When figures come out showing the rest of the lockdown it’s unlikely to get any prettier, but the real question is what will happen when lockdown lifts. We just don’t know.However whether you’re a buyer or a seller, I’m a big believer that no matter what the situation is there are always things you can do to get the odds in your favour. For the latest Cooking the Books, I talked to OneRoof editor Owen Vaughan.We discussed whether this might be an opportunity for first home buyers, the tactics that can help sellers get a better price, and what key indicators to watch for as we leave lockdown.If you have a question about this podcast, or question you'd like answered in the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookJournalist/ Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz/ and Twitter here https://twitter.com/FrancesCook