KEY POINTS:
There's still plenty of money to be made in the housing market, despite frightening property stories such as this one, according to one market research company who specialise in that industry.
Online residential property market research company Suburbwatch says as long as buyers know which suburb to pick, there's still plenty of potential for earnings growth - between five and ten per cent annually, in fact.
Some parts of Wellington will even yield annual returns of 20 per cent, the website's report says.
Suburbwatch claims to "analyse long term property price trends which identify strengthening and weakening market trends in individual suburbs before the market reflects them in current property prices."
It also identifies what it deems to be 'Fast Mover' suburbs, where prices are moving up a lot quicker than other locations.
Their website highlights the country's three major cities and breaks them down suburb by suburb.
Each suburb attracts a rating, not dissimilar to those which an equities market analyst would attribute to a particular stock for his clients: "Buy, Buy-Hold,Hold, Sell-Hold, and Sell".
Their summaries of current activity in the three main centres are as follows:
AUCKLAND
"A divergence in property price growth trends across parts of Auckland with some suburbs revealing a deterioration in their trends whilst other suburbs look set to continue to boom. These trends indicate that now 40 per cent of Auckland suburbs are still offering good capital growth opportunities in the short to medium term."
WELLINGTON
"Wellington generally remains a strong market with some suburbs revealing a 20 per cent capital growth rate on an annualised basis."
CHRISTCHURCH
"Christchurch is experiencing a continued shift to property price growth trends which reveal slowing property price growth but still around half of Christchurch suburbs are now indicating it is a good time to buy."
Access to the information on the website is by subscription, starting from $30 and going all the way up to around $1000.
