Immigration – the property fix-all?
Will migrant growth be the panacea to get growth back into the property market?
Commenting in an article in the NZ Herald last week, Goldman Sachs JBWere’s Bernard Doyle said the increase in migration numbers was continuing to be impelled by a tumble at the other end, a reduction in the number of permanent departures
“no doubt indicative of the lack of pull factors in international labour markets currently.”
He went on to express optimism if these levels were maintained.
Backing this up in the same article was Jane Turner economist with ASB Bank who said the turnaround in migration over the past few months had been swift and was likely to continue to rise. She noted…
“The rapid pick-up comes as departures have fallen dramatically, in particular, departures to Australia”
And looking forward Darren Gibbs, from Deutsche Bank stated
“we continue to think that New Zealand will experience sustained and strong net migrant inflows over the next three years.”
I have just glanced at a piece over at the population.govt.nz website, countering what many have previously held up as reasoning for unseasonal upswings in immigration numbers. The contention was that the 9-11 attacks had a dramatic effect, prompting, amongst others, returning ex-pats.
They believe and the chart above tends to support this trend, that after a sustained period of increasing numbers (PLT’s) leaving the country, an swing to the upside appears as good percentages of those PLT’s decide to come back.
Here is a longer term charge courtesy of Dept of Labour site here.
Busted they say under the heading – “Myth: New Zealand’s population is only growing because of migration” too. Read the summary here.
And when it comes to this one – “Myth: There are at least 1,000,000 New Zealanders living overseas” it would appear the jury is still out, rather in plain English, not enough currently reliable data to make any realterm statements other than predictions, etc. Although they do state that a recent Aussie census found 477,000 Kiwis residing across the ditch.
Another local perspective here.
If you are interested you can visit here for the 3 million Kiwis and 60 million sheep myth, alongside others.
SOURCE ARTICLE – NZ HERALD 21st May 2009
May 26 2009 | General and New Zealand | No Comments »
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