UMR poll on house prices

Hive News reports:

But yesterday UMR released results of a poll that found 60% of Aucklanders and 55% of home owners would prefer that house prices either fell a bit or fell dramatically over the next year.

The poll of 1,000 New Zealanders over the age of 18 was taken from July 29 to August 17 through UMR’s online omnibus survey and found a total of 63% nationwide who would either prefer house prices to ‘fall but not too much’ (37%) or to fall dramatically (26%).

UMR, which conducts polls for the Labour, found 55% of home owners would prefer house prices to fall a bit (40%) or dramatically (15%).

The poll found 14% of respondents preferred house prices either kept rising rapidly (4%) or at a slower pace (10%), while 17% of Aucklanders wanted house prices to keep rising rapidly (4%) or at a slower pace (13%). A total of 15% of home owners wanted house prices to rise rapidly (2%) or at a slower pace (13%). There were 633 home owners and 331 Aucklanders who took the poll.

The poll also asked if there was a housing crisis at the moment and found that 81% of all respondents and 85% of Aucklanders thought there was a crisis, while 79% of home owners thought there was housing crisis. Fourteen per cent of those polled thought there was no crisis and 5% were unsure.