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Okay, now I'm feeling like Atrios.

A fellow expat pointed me to this article, which also has some disturbing housing information in it. This is what I found most troubling, as it confirmed my back of the envelope calculations

The median house price is now worth 9.9 times the median income. This is significantly higher than 6.3 times five years ago. New Zealand’s home loan affordability can be internationally benchmarked from comparable research by Demographia.com. Demographia use an affordability standard of a house-and-land price of three times annual gross income (or 4.5 times after-tax). What is impressive is that there are many first-world communities, including many large ones, that can meet that standard.

According to CNN/Money's annual list of the most affordable housing markets in the US, NZ would rank below LA in terms of affordability.

(In case you're too lazy to click through, the gist is that in the US there are a lot of places where a family earns $50K and the median house sells for $80K.)

If you look at the NZ report, you'll see the last table (about 1/2 way down on the left) which shows that this isn't an Auckland problem, but a NZ-wide problem. With regard to mortgage payments as a percentage of weekly income, 5 years ago the most expensive place to live in NZ was 3.3 times the least expensive place, with a high of 59.3% in Auckland and a low of 17.7% in Southland. Today, the most expensive place is only twice as expensive as the least, with Auckland at 95.5% and Southland at 46.4%. (I'm ignoring the Central Otago Lakes figures because the area's figures are inflated because of the number of vacation homes and lodges there.)

If you've popped by this page, you're probably thinking, "That lazy jerk ... he hasn't updated his blog in MONTHS!" Then you felt a little guilty, thinking "Oh my god, I hope he's alright. Maybe he's dead, and that's why he hasn't been blogging."

Well, worry not. I've just moved to a new home, literally and figuratively. Click on over and find out what's going on!

A bunch of candids, plus some flooding pictures

Well, here are some new pictures. You'll see some of Evan playing golf with the Wii, and a couple of him playing Cars on the Wii too. The big pile of passports and sheets of paper on my desk is our application for New Zealand immigration. That sucker arrived in London (yeah, they have a branch office there) two weeks ago, so now pretty much all we do is wait, wait, wait ... oh yeah, get the house ready to sell, find a job, find a place to live in New Zealand, pack up our stuff ...

I have a feeling the hard work is really ahead, not behind.

Yup, here are the Christmas Pictures!