Rikkitic:

 

She is carrying maximum debt at this time (and recently learned she could never have done what she did under the new regulations) but she is a millionaire on paper and has enough equity to protect herself even if the market collapsed. 

 

Unfortunately the fact that so many people have done this is the reason why loads of FHBs are not so lucky, and recent ones will find themselves underwater, despite only ever owning one house at any given time.

Like the rags-to-riches stories are great, but there comes a point where it stops working. We can't all just rent houses to each other, and the balance of affordability has swung so far away from what you can afford based on an ordinary wage that at some point you kind of have to call it for what it is - which is a zero-sum game at best. The only way people can win is if someone else loses, in some way.

Once you factor in the $5b+ going overseas in foreign bank profits per year, I'm not sure that even 'zero-sum' is correct. I wonder what NZ would be like if we had an extra $30b sloshing around the local economy for the last six or so years alone.