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Opinion: New Zealand shows how a housing crisis can become a catastrophe

Justin Giovannetti is a Montreal-based journalist.

New Zealand and Canada’s housing markets have much in common. They both have some of the least affordable homes in the world and both saw prices explode during the pandemic.Phil Walter/Getty Images

When my fiancée and I decided to announce we were leaving New Zealand to return to Canada, I prepared myself for awkward conversations. I needn’t have worried. Most of our friends beat us to the punch with their own plans to leave, turning the first months of 2022 into a long going-away party. For those who remained, the conversation boiled down to one question: “It’s the housing, isn’t it?”

I arrived in New Zealand’s capital of Wellington in early 2020 with my fiancée, a New Zealander, to buy a house and start a family. We knew that the Pacific country’s overheated housing market would be a challenge, but we’d lived in…

Read more at www.theglobeandmail.com

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