Couple’s house hunting locked down, for now
Wellington first-home buyer Eleanor Wenman had to put her property hunt on ice during the lockdown, but she remains optimistic the property market could turn in her favour when coronavirus restrictions ease.
Wenman and her partner, Pascarn Dickinson, began looking for a property in Wellington late last year.
‘‘When you’d go to open homes, there’d be lines out the door,’’ she said.
They were looking at buying their first home in Johnsonville, Khandallah, South Karori and the Hutt Valley, she said.
‘‘But a week or two before the lockdown happened, we could see the lines were just dropping dramatically. Over alert level four, there’s just nothing happening.’’
She said the future for housing remained uncertain and she was taking real estate agents’ advice with a grain of salt.
‘‘On the one hand, we have all the real estate agents’ emails saying it’s going to be fine, but then you’ve got the economists saying it will drop off later this year.’’
Wenman said she and her partner were lucky to have secure jobs to get on with during the lockdown.
‘‘On the whole, I am tending towards it’s going to be positive.’’
Many first-time home buyers will be looking at their low KiwiSaver balances with worry.
However, Wenman said she was lucky to be advised to switch to a conservative scheme in January – before the coronavirus threat even arrived in New Zealand.
‘‘When everything started happening and everything went crazy, I would see it drop a little bit, but not anything like my friends and family noticed,’’ she said.
The economic turmoil of the coronavirus was still a concern for them, she said.
‘‘It’s just shown us that things can change so quickly.’’