Net migration has turned negative. No effect there, but the immigration spigot can be used to boost flagging economic fortunes. Possible tick to price rises.
Long-term population growth is increasing. Stats New Zealand has us at five million by the middle of the next decade, we must live somewhere. Another price rise tick.
Interest rates are low and likely to remain so, which allows people to leverage themselves until their noses bleed. They will, driving up prices.
Land in Auckland is constrained. The Super City wants us to build up, but we want to spread out. Expect prices to rise.
Key is committed to bringing us to surplus. If he is serious, expect significant economic disruption. This could lead to a boom, like the 1984 reforms initially did, or it could lead to a crunch, like the GFC did.
If we lived in a simple two-dimensional world, one newspaper columnists could understand, Auckland house prices would be sure to rise.
We do not live in a simple world, of course. The future is a different planet. Let's take one problem we know about: the sovereign debt crisis.
Large-scale government debt default could lead to European bank failures, bank collapse and a new economic depression.
Then there are the things that will happen that we do not know about. An outbreak of foot and mouth, or a pre-emptive Israeli strike on Iran backfiring, are unlikely, but unlikely events happen frequently.
If they happen the week after you leveraged yourself until your nose was bleeding so you could buy a renovator's delight in Mt Roskill that the real estate agent convinced you was really Epsom South, you are screwed.
Ollie Newland is predicting a new bubble. The Economist says our house prices are 25 per cent overvalued. Who to believe?
I do not have an answer, I only have opinions.
