This year has been another busy one and this is the final newsletter from us until next year. 

As mentioned in the last newsletter, we will be available by phone or email if required; but our offices will be unattended after the 21st of December until the 7th of January. 

Also in January, some good news is there will be changes made to enable banks to approve more home loans for borrowing over 80% of their value, so we'll talk more about that next year. Until then we wish you a safe festive season and protect yourself and family against those UV rays!

We thank you for any referrals sent to us over the past 12 months and we will be in touch again in 2019. 

Cheers from the team at Taupo's Mortgage Link.

New Zealand's collective household wealth has soared in value over the past decade, thanks mostly to an increase in the value of property assets. According to Statistics New Zealand, the net worth of New Zealand households rose from $886 billion in 2007 to $1.5 trillion today, a jump of 69 percent. Kiwis are not feeling the direct effects of these riches, however, with wealth tied up in real estate and pension funds, household debt levels high, savings rates low, and the distribution curve far from equal.

The end of a historic tax break for New Zealand landlords could have unintended negative consequences for tenants. While stopping the tax break on loss-making rental properties has been designed to even the playing field between investors and first-home buyers, costs are likely to get passed down to tenants. If the situation does improve for first-home buyers as a result of the changes, renters may also be adversely affected due to a decrease in the amount of affordable housing stock. 

Home sizes are shrinking across the western world, with rising populations, apartment living, and increasing prices putting renewed pressure on the size of the family home. While smaller houses are not necessarily cheaper, they do provide people with more choice in overheated property markets. Rather than seeing shrinking homes as a negative consequence of unsustainable population growth, people are embracing the trend for high quality, high density homes that just happen to have a smaller footprint.

Some people wake at the crack of dawn to exercise, with others waiting until after work in the late afternoon or evening. While exercise is great at any time of the day, it seems our internal body clocks can have a huge effect on the amount of calories that we burn. Finding the perfect time for your fitness regime is part art and part science, with each person needing to match their personal preferences with universal circadian rhythms and innate human physiology.