National average asking price virtually unchanged for over a year

Matt from Matt Wineera - Thats Real Estate with Matt Wineera

Since January 2023, the national average asking price has remained stable. At $868,877, it is down a marginal 0.6% on April last year. The national average asking price has remained below $900,000 since December 2022, a significant decrease from the market peak in January 2022 when it exceeded $1 million.

“As we move into the winter months, we typically see a cooling market, and in 2024, this is combined with a softening economy. It will be interesting to see how these factors play out for the property market in the coming months,” says Sarah Wood, CEO of realestate.co.nz

ANZAC DAY

Matt from Matt Wineera - Thats Real Estate with Matt Wineera

Half a world away from dawn services in Australia & New Zealand, a small group of dignitaries will meet in Malta this Anzac Day among the neat rows of headstones at sun-baked Pieta Military Cemetery just outside Valletta – as they have since 1916 – to commemorate a moving but largely forgotten chapter of Gallipoli lore.

It is the story of how a tiny, ancient, impoverished and battle-scarred nation in the centre of the Mediterranean opened its arms and hearts to care for thousands of wounded, traumatised and sick young Anzacs, many of them still teenagers, who arrived aboard a flotilla of blood-soaked hospital ships from the battlefields of Gallipoli.

While most of the 57,950 soldiers evacuated to Malta recovered and eventually left, some 202 Australians and 72 New Zealanders did not, and are in war cemeteries across the archipelago.

Apart from their graves hewn from the parched, rocky Maltese earth, there is little other physical evidence the Anzacs were ever in Malta, despite the enormity of their presence over a century ago.

The voyage across the Eastern Mediterranean in these makeshift hospital ships from the Gallipoli Peninsula to Malta was not an easy one. It took the steam ships up to eight days to cover the 1163-kilometre journey.

At the beginning of April 1915, there were 824 military hospital beds in Malta. At the end of May 1915, there were more than 6000 in 14 hospitals spread all over the island. At its peak there were 25,522 beds in 28 hospitals, with the highest number of patients on any one day a staggering 16,004.

We will remember them 🥀 🌺

(article written by Andrew Hornery a senior journalist and former Private Sydney columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald).

Poll: Would you want an unconventional funeral?

The Team from Neighbourly.co.nz

Funerals can cost as much as $22,000 and the planning can be stressful especially at a time when loved ones are grieving. Some New Zealanders are re-imagining funerals by making their own coffin or having a relaxed ceremony at home. Would you want a less traditional funeral? Share your thoughts below.

Type 'Not For Print' if you wish your comments to be excluded from the Conversations column of your local paper.

Would you want an unconventional funeral?

• Yes
• No
• Other - I'll share below!

Vote View Results

• 83.6% Yes
  83.6% Complete
• 14.1% No
  14.1% Complete
• 2.2% Other - I'll share below!
  2.2% Complete

1748 votes