He uses an "average house price" of $893,639. That is being massively skewed upwards by urban centres. Rural houses are still relatively affordable - a quick search on Trademe finds perfectly acceptable houses in small towns like Ashburton for $300k, and if you get out into rural areas it gets even cheaper. He's also assuming that farmhand would have bought an "average-price" house back in the 90s - in fact rural houses were cheaper back then just as they are today.

Using the Westpac Mortgage calculator he used, a couple each on the median income of $61k ($29 an hour) could afford a property at $809,687 with a 20% deposit. To give him credit, that is still pretty much unaffordable for most people and something we should all be appalled by, but it is nowhere near as terrible as the picture he is painting.

I know nothing about them.

Vince has some extremely questionable views on things like culture, race, history and politics. According to him, ultimately a lot of things come back to "the Jews". He is a contributor to the far-right fringe disinformation outlet Counterspin Media.

[–] jeff11@lemmy.nz 4 points 1 year ago

Houses in the middle of nowhere will be cheaper, but most jobs don't exist out there so I think main centres are a good way to analyse it. I've seen Vince say something about Jews maybe once. He is a intelligent guy but sometimes his views are a bit um, off the cuff. I watched a video of his where he describes New Zealanders as being "autistic" supposedly because they can't socialise well without alcohol. I laughed pretty hard. It was such a random opinion, somewhat true but still felt like it was heavy opinionated.