In this market, I feel sorry for those poor souls who paid mega-bucks for plaster homes at the height of the market. A lot of them were staged inside right down to the curtain hooks, to distract the buyers from potential exterior problems. Luckily for these vendors, it was before all the leaky home saga broke out in the media in a big way. I'm from Auckland and I know the problem was there way way before people in Chch had even heard of it. Don't be mistaken, it's not just the cheap ghetto style townhouses that are shonky, - it's the million-dollar homes in the hills and Merivale. The more expensive homes just do a better job in disguising all the problems by dressing them up as show homes and passing on their problems to someone else. Hopefully everyone has been reading the news and they are now wiser. After all, buying a home is a family's single biggest investment and you don't want that investment turning to custard.

Shaza your right, but the problem is that even after the Global Financial Crisis the real estate market is still fixated on achieving "growth" in house market prices. This benefits nobody apart from real estate agents and those fortunate enough to make capital gains with this approach.

For the good of the country, we need house prices to be affordable so that people have money to spend on other things, to improve the quality of life and to benefits the economy and other businesses.

This is why the Government should do all they can to keep house prices down.

Im sick of listening to the monthly spiel from the Real Estate industry on the "market".

Price Price Price #1 Well done, you understand capitalism, the problem with the free world, everyone is in it for themselves, but no one is stopping you from moving somewhere else

It used to be "Location Location Location" now its "Price Price Price" and there lies the problem in why many properties are not selling. Majority of the homes in Christchurch are grossly overpriced and we can thank the RealEstate Industry, Greedy investors and even homeowner for listening to the rubbish that RE Agents and Property Advisors have told them about the Big Bucks one can make on selling/buying. I have seen people make upwards to $60,000 plus on new property by on-selling it on settlement day 10 years ago and then laughing how they ripped some beggar off in the process and it had gotten worst till of course where we are now as many can not even afford to buy a property especially with first home buyers.

I often said many years ago that if kill off the first home buyers you will eventually kill off realestate..That simple and its happening now.

There are plenty of dumps about for between $250,000 to $300,000 some of which I would not even let a dog in.

Tie in the cost of basic food, clothing and not to mention poor wages no wonder the state of this wonderful country is where it is today...Greed is strangling it to death.