So what have we got so far by way of proof that the whole “lets tilt the housing market the first homer buyers way” isn’t really working the way the government might have hoped?
Firstly, the good news. Tony Alexander the economist polls his people regularly and in the past three months he has broadly concluded that it’s slightly harder for an investor to get money from a bank and it’s slightly easier for a first timer to get a yes.
He also confirms what virtually everyone seems to have observed: investors have pulled back a bit and auctions are a bit slower.
But also that first home buyers are spooked.
First home buyers might well have been under the impression that prices were going to fall, so they are waiting, waiting, perhaps not understanding that prices aren’t falling and were never going to.
At best, the price increases will most likely slow a bit.
The great debate right now is whether the government and the Reserve Bank’s claim that price increases will be limited to 0.9 percent as of next year and barely a couple of percent going forward. Whether that’s remotely true or, as Simon bridges puts it, UFO stuff.
Either way what is true and has been for ages is, one, its winter and the market slows anyway - it always  has; two, supply is still a real issue; and three, from NZ to Australia to the UK and America, everyone is seeing the same issues.
Building supply prices are rising, labour is tight, money is cheap and house prices are going gang busters.
All of them, to one degree or another, have the taxes restraints and rules in place that we do, the same rules that magically will solve the so called housing crisis, and yet, perhaps not surprisingly, none of them are doing to the prices what they allegedly are supposed to be doing.
The Reserve Bank in perhaps the ultimate irony has written to the government seeking permission for a loan to debt mechanism, in other words a restraint on banks on lending  you too much money beyond the LVR.  
In other words, even if you drum up the deposit, you still can’t borrow more than say four or five times your income, thus making the first home dream not just hard but impossible, and thus meaning the so called tilt to the first home buyer turns out to be a complete bust.
So the big question: if they’ve got this hopelessly wrong, at what point do they get called out on it, or better, but unlikely, at what point do they admit they are out of their depth, there is way too much theory and not enough real world, and that the market is not something people who have read books can adjust fix or manipulate?