Sales of properties are running around 40% down from a year ago, it is taking 13 days longer than a year back to sell a dwelling, prices have fallen 9.5% from their peak, and listings are up of deep weakness in the residential property sector has not come about because of a wave of distressed sellers. There is no evidence of a wave of investors selling ever since the tax rules were changed last year despite a special survey I ran with 3,500 responses showing plenty of owners planning to raise their rents or sell their properties. The dummy was spit but no further action taken. Very few owners are going to end up paying a higher interest rate on their mortgage than they had to prove to the bank they could handle when they signed up for their purchase and debt 1, 2, 3 etc years in the past.
So, why has the housing market slowed down and gone into reverse? Because the buyers have slipped back into the shadows. Why are they hiding out of sight? Because getting credit suddenly became a lot harder late last year, mortgage interest rose 3%+ over a very short period of time, there was a cost of living crunch, and fears of prices rising and rising disappaited.
This104%.situation
The labour market is also exceptionally tight and people owning property are likely to be feeling that if they get laid off they can easily get another job to help service their mortgage.
4 August 2022 Confidential to the email recipient. Not for distribution Subscribe at http://tonyalexander.nz/test.php ISSN: 2703 5565 Input to your Strategy for Adapting to Challenges Distribution beyond the direct email recipient is not permitted and this publication may not be loaded on any website or social media platform When will buyers return?
Thisfinance.isthe situation now. 82% say buyers are worried about high interest rates, 78% cite worries about getting finance, and 69% cite worries of prices falling. Only 11% say listings are a worry and a still low 11% say employment is a concern, unchanged from September. So, the big concerns are interest rates, financing, and price declines. The first two of these areas are improving, the last will follow before the end of the year also and could even be changing a tad right now Interest rates Fixed mortgage interest rates have started to decline. This may not receive much attention in the media for some time because the focus will be on the cash flow implications of rate changes for those who fixed at low rates last year and are now rolling into something higher.
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This first following graph shows the proportion of agents in September 2021 who said buyers were worried about each of the things listed. Only 35% were worried about rising interest rates and just 22% said buyers were fearful of prices falling after they purchased. But 78% said they were concerned about insufficient listings, 56% said high prices, and 48% cited difficulties getting
When will the buyers return and start soaking up the growing stock of listings? To answer that it pays to have some insight into what the things are which concern buyers most of all at the moment. That is information I can get from the monthly survey of residential real estate agents nationwide which I run with REINZ.
Confidential to the email recipient Page | 3 But those people are not hesitant home buyers. They already have a house and a mortgage and their spending plan changes have almost no relevance for the residential real estate market. Instead it is the buyers in the shadows that are relevant here and over time they will realise that we have already seen the peaks for almost all fixed lending rates for home buyers.
The Reserve Bank is still set to take the official cash rate from the current 2.5% to a probable peak of 3.5%. But fixed rates reflect market expectations of monetary policy and not where the cash rate sits at the moment. Those market expectations are for monetary policy to be easing by the end of 2023 with cuts continuing through 2024. Hence big falls in bank wholesale borrowing costs recently and the partial pass through into their fixed lending rates. These rate cut expectations reflect early signs of inflationary pressures easing off and worries about recessions in the likes of the United States and Europe increasing recently. International oil prices are down along with prices for minerals and food. Shipping costs are easing and supply chains functioning slightly better. A measure of online consumer prices in the US is now falling, the pace of rents growth here in New Zealand is easing, consumer inflation expectations have fallen in the ANZ’s monthly gauge, and the Reserve Bank’s Survey of Expectations held amongst market analysts has also just eased marginally. High inflation numbers will be with us for well into 2023. But the direction of change outside countries which allowed themselves to become dependent on Russian gas is turning downward. Over the next few months buyer concerns about interest rates are going to fall away. Access to finance As noted last week, various gauges from my monthly surveys tell us that the credit crunch was at its worst very early this year.
One interesting thing to consider is that in coming weeks we may see first home buyers increasingly challenged to give thought to what matters to them. Do they hold off from buying because they want to avoid the last 5% fall in prices and buy at the bottom so they can feel clever? Or do they want a house in which to raise a family? Last year they scrambled to find anything (unsuccessfully) when the stock of property listings was at a record low below 14,000. Now, listings are double what they were a year ago,
Competition between banks for mortgage business is strong, and for the moment they are fighting that competition with cashback offers. Eventually they will back away from such costly incentives and revert to discounted lending rates plus greater willingness to lend generally. Beyond that there is a good chance that when house prices have gone down another 5.5% and the Reserve Bank then considers them to be “sustainable”, that there will be an easing of LVR Creditregulations.availability
The challenge to first home buyers
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is likely to improve bit by bit for home buyers from here on out. Worries about falling prices
It will take some time for these concerns to fall away. But as each month passes and average prices go lower, more and more potential buyers will give thought to how close we might be to prices bottoming out and how much prices have pulled back from their ridiculous heights of late last year. At some point buyers generally will lose their price fall fears, or just ignore them in the interests of securing a property from the large number of listings.
The measure of price decline worries which I derive from my monthly survey of residential real estate agents has in fact eased for two months in a row now. But the decline from 73% to 69% is very small and not enough for me to yet feel confident saying that we have passed peak FOOP fear of over paying.
• migrants have yet to return in numbers, and
• vendors are increasingly open to offers,
Extra for Thermal Heart Aluminium $17,765 Extra for double batts in ceiling $2,873 Extra for Low E $3,306 150 x 50 framing at ranch sliders $431”
• you have a job and can probably shift voluntarily to another one for higher wages if you wanted given the extreme unsatisfied business demand for staff,
The three main factors causing concern for buyers and making them stay back in the shadows will ease as we head into Christmas. All that is really in doubt is the speed of the easing and the lag in months between the buyers coming out of the shadows and average house prices moving back up slightly again over 2023.
• investor buyers are sitting back waiting to see what happens with the election and not competing against current active buyers.
• prices are down 10%, (a lot more in some locations)
• there is a greater chance of finding a property which meets your anticipated needs than at any other time since 2015,
• banks are increasingly eager to lend and may trade cashbacks for discounted fixed rates,
“The house concerned is a pretty standard 3 bedroom home, about 180 square metres, so not big by todays standards. The build cost is circa $580 $600k, so slightly over $3,000 PSM.
Confidential to the email recipient Page | 5 and it is a buyer’s market in which home hunters can increasingly pick and choose. Why would you not look to buy now when
• there are twice as many properties to choose amongst than last year,
Also, keep in mind that construction costs are only going to keep going up. A reader for instance this week emailed me the builder’s estimate of the extra cost if they were to voluntarily meet the incoming new insulation standards ahead of time. The total build cost (excludes the section) rises 4%.
Investment preferences
It may surprise many people to see a rise in net intentions of purchasing residential investment property. This entirely reflects a fall in intentions to sell residential property, not a lift in intentions to buy. This decline in investor selling intentions is something young home buyers should think about. Investors in the residential property sector are generally there for the long term and not to make a quick buck. As buyers, investors will return if they believe there will be a change in government late next year as is looking increasingly likely. National have promised to restore interest expense deductibility and take the brightline test back to two years.
Contributing factors to this will be rising term deposit interest rates and falling prices for other assets encouraging people to park their funds in banks for a while.
From the monthly survey of portfolio investors which I run with the sponsorship of Sharesies we can see some trends in the net purchasing intentions which people have towards particular Byassets.offsetting expressions of intentions to purchase particular assets against intentions to sell we can calculate a rough net intentions measure for each of the assets I ask about. By comparing the latest net measures with November last year when the survey settled down we can see that there has been a firm lift in intentions of placing money in savings accounts.
Regional spending plans For your guide, here are the key results from my monthly Spending Plans Survey broken down to the regional level. Intentions of spending more generally are negative everywhere but most so in Taranaki, Marlborough, and Southland. The least weakness is in Nelson. Auckland is about the same as the rest of the Wellingtoncountry. is slightly stronger. Nelson has been consistently stronger since early this Canterburyyear.isabout average.
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Home renovations The home renovations sector has boomed over the past two years but a slowdown of lesser degree than for most other areas of household spending is underway. Marlborough and some other parts of the South Island look like still presenting good business levels for renovators in the near future.
Eating out Prospects for cafes and restaurants look very poor everywhere except Marlborough. Motor vehicles For motor vehicle dealers sales prospects for the rest of this year look poor everywhere except Queenstown Lakes and Marlborough.
Furniture The following graph shows where furniture sellers might experience the weakest trading conditions over the remainder of this year.
Regional housing plans From my monthly Spending Plans Survey we can also gain insight into demand for owner occupied and investment property at the regional level. The intentions people express for buying a house to live in have fallen in recent months but with a small recovery in August. On a regional basis these home buying intentions are negative everywhere except at the top of the South Island. In Auckland there has been quite a good recovery in intentions but they remain at 2% from 7% last month. In Wellington intentions are about average but with no August improvement. Canterbury similarly has failed to improve this month and the trend remains down.
Confidential to the email recipient Page | 10 With regard to thoughts of purchasing an investment property net intentions have slightly improved this month but remain at levels consistent with others since the start of the year. Residential property investment intentions are negative everywhere except Marlborough and Queenstown Lakes. Auckland is weaker than the rest of the country. Wellington is stillslightly stronger thanaverage for all New Zealand. Canterbury is there or thereabouts. Note the strength in Queenstown Lakes.
• The market is being dictated to by lenders.
Surprising lack of market observation and understanding by vendors.
• Signs of things bottoming out here and there.
Each month in my survey of residential real estate agents I invite respondents to give their thoughts on how they are seeing things in the market at the moment. Many replies come in and I have taken to splitting my reprinting of many of them into two groups run over two weeks. Below are most of the comments submitted for the lower North Island and South Island regions. The main points made include these.
• Buyers will engage if the price has a built in 15 to 20% adjustment on last year’s higher prices. Otherwise they are prepared to wait for the predictions of continued price correction.
• Finance still seems unbelievably difficult.
• Sense a slight turning or bottoming of the market but still vulnerable. Further interest rate rises could scupper this.
• Well presented properties requiring no renovations are still receiving good interest, as are higher priced properties.
• Buyers few and far between, expecting bargains.
• More back looking with end of school holidays
Real estate agent insights
• People seem to be holding off, the weather isn't helping.
• And banks playing real estate agents and telling their burrowers that the house is only worth X. So that is all they will lend them. The worst example we had, was an offer on a property at $2.7 million for the bank to say it is only worth $1.8 million. We suggested they get an independent valuation done. And it came back valued it at or over the $2.7mill. So the buyers proceeded and bought the property. So frustrating for our owners.
• Vendors expectations are not coming down as quick as the market.
• Currently very low buyer enquiry or interest.
• Noticed an increase in multiple offers on properties in the last 2 weeks
Hawke’s Bay
• Higher end new properties seem to be holding their price.
• We are finding now that this market has flipped and open homes are being run with no one turningup enquiries have droppedoff. It's like buyers are on strike! When buyers come through there is no rush and most are looking for a bargainand will put in well below the asking price offers which most vendors refuse so is a very frustrating time to be in real estate at this present time. I know a lot of agents that have not sold a property since Xmas and are hurting financially. Wellington • Market showing signs of life with more enquiry and attendance to open homes.
• Well presented properties are still getting attention and attracting serious buyers. Not many tire kickers around, more serious buyers. Prices are reasonably stable. Buyers want price certainty, so selling on price is more popular. Taranaki
• Due to the constant media beat up. We are now getting buyers putting in offers of more than $100k lower, than asking prices. And telling us that the market is falling. But our vendorshavealreadytaken the fallingmarket into account.
• Buyers seem very reluctant to buy any property thatneeds any sortof work including just basic paint and decorating. They want to purchase something that is already very nice and first home buyers seem to be capped at $750,000 Marlborough
Nelson • Market still very soft with a number of homeowners struggling to sell. Numbers at open homes still down and prices still seem tobe retractingalthough because thenumber of sales is down we are not seeing this in the statistics. On the ground floor though, what had been selling for say $930k is now selling for $865k (tops).
• Properties above $750,000 have more interested buyers and seem to sell quicker and the price is holding provided the property is well located and nicely presented. Below that there is downwards price pressure and it is taking weeks longer to sell with no buyer competition Poorly presented properties are punished price wise.
• Vendor expectations are at hot market levels making managing price expectation difficult. This is contributing to longer sale periods and the marketed price changes, which cools the interest.
• Sellers’ expectations are still too high, some agents are over appraising to win the listing, further confirming high expectations of sellers. Agents aren’t having the hard conversations with vendors, and then the property sits and doesn't sell. West Coast
• Properties that have been sitting on the market for months are getting solid offers now. It feels some confidence is comingback for buyers to proceed in North Canterbury.
• The new Unitary plan is impacting land values for re development i.e. RMD and RSDT land here in ChCh
Tasman • Prices holding up and in some cases setting new records but need to spend time in the market to get the good results.
• No auctions held here even in good times; most properties sold with a listing price.
• Sanity prevailing in the marketplace after many years of it being a seller’s market. I notice many new town house developments under construction. I feel with high interest rates many of these will sit and many developers will go under. I am also aware that the consent process in Christchurch is holding up many developments.
• It's a stand off out there, still plenty of people have an offer on their house conditional on selling theirs or waiting for a cash buyer so they can make a better decision, understandable people are nervous, buyers looking for a deal. Some owners very motivated and big price drops, but still people nervous.
• Buyers are 'sticky' and vendors are starting to come to terms that it takes longer to sell these days. Its a bit like the good old days pre covid in my rural areas.
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• Many 'buyers' coming through open homes are just 'browsing' at the moment, the sense of urgency is gone
Canterbury • I think buyers are starting to realise that Christchurch property has not dropped significantly and are starting to come back to the market. My recent auctions have sold with multiple bidders at good prices.
• It is a buyer's market. They are taking their time and doing their due diligence. There is a lot for them to choose from and they refuse to be pressured even by deadline sale dates. It is the sellers who are now keen to sell but finding it more challenging to 'get sold', particularly if there are disclosures on the property.
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• July sucks the worst month in 16 years of running an office. No longer paying myself to try to reduce negative cash flow.
• Our area in Waimate is still showing good sales. We are getting fewer enquiries and so are having to work on our database and also keeping in touch with those who have missed out on other properties. The market here is still good, we’re just having to work harder to get the buyers, however in the last couple of weeks that has been increasing. Pricing has basically plateaued and vendors having to be conditioned regarding the current market i.e. Missed the bubble and longer time on the market.
• In Queenstown we are seeing extreme stock shortage coupled with slightly increased buyer confidence. For certain products (modern, well presented) we have strong demand, and several auctions last week had multiple bidders and strong prices. Some properties are not having any interest from the market, like older or poorly presented properties.
Southland • Multiple offers are on the rise.
Queenstown Lakes • Queenstown is presently short of rental property stock, due to landlords selling out.
• The market tends to be quieter during the winter and it will be the spring where we will really see the trend I think.
• Last year we had buyers queueing for open homes; multi offers and unconditional offers were common. That has changed. Double figure open homes are rare, multi offers are less common and so areunconditionaloffers.
• It would appear slowly but surely the market is getting harder and buyers are becoming more selective and taking their time to purchase. There is no urgency.
• People with money still have money, so top endof the market is goingvery well for quality homes. Overall though, very few existing home listings in our area, the lowest I have seen in over 12 years. We would have to have a dramatic increase in listings to even come close to being back to what has been a normal market over the last decade. Section sales is a very different story, with sales basically stalling over the last few months, due to material supply & costs.
• After a fairly stable period prices are softening but not collapsing
• Section sales virtually at a standstill.
Otago excluding Queenstown Lakes (largely Dunedin)
• In our area, there are buyers wanting to buy, and sellers wanting to sell for genuine reasons. Finance availability for buyers remains the most likely deterrent. Both buyers and sellers are hearing the 'Auckland' news about prices falling. This has caused a few buyers to decide they will wait for that.
Local House Price Momentum This week I take a look at where things have been going recently for prices from Hurunui down to Waimate including Christchurch, Ashburton, and TheseTimaru.indexes are based on a comparison of the price of properties sold with their CVs. Calculation of the average divergence is applied to an index for the whole area to get a good measure of price change not biased by variations from month to month in the types of properties sold. The following table shows how much each location’s average house prices have changed in the past three months, the change in the three months before that, and the change since just before the pandemic.Past 3 Previous Since months 3 months Pre Covid % % % Hurunui 5.1 6.1 48.4 Waimakariri 3.3 2.3 49.0 Christchurch -3.0 0.9 48.4 Selwyn 3.6 3.8 48.4 Ashburton 2.3 0.5 45.4 Timaru 0.8 3.2 33.0 Mackenzie 8.8 2.6 25.8 Waimate 2.2 5.3 45.4 NZ 4.9 2.0 32.0 NZ ex. Auckland 7.3 4.6 20.5 With regard to getting a feel for whether a location might be priced well away from trend we can use long term graphs showing average prices compared with the NZ average. Note that apart from Waimate, all the locations covered this week have prices below trend but with catch ups underway. 1.51.41.31.21.10.90.80.70.61 93 95 97 99 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 2021 RatioofHurunuiDistrictHousePriceIndextotheNZAverage PriceSource:REINZHouseIndexes
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Tony’s View Spending Plans Survey
The key results from our latest survey which yielded 1,158 responses include the following.
What the surveys tell us
REINZ & Tony Alexander Real Estate Survey
This month’s survey of the 28,000 subscribers to my weekly Tony’s View publication yielded 1,207 responses. The main result is an improvement in net spending intentions to 18% from a record 27% last month. Whilst better, the result still suggests falling household spending across a range of goods and services over the remainder of this year excluding offshore travel and Improvementsgroceries. in spending intentions were recorded for all categories except motor vehicles where a two year binge has come to an end. A net 9.9% of people plan cutting back spending on investment property and a net 3.8% intend cutting back on buying a house to live in. However, a net 5% intend buying more shares.
Portfolio Investment Survey Sponsored by Sharesies
• There is rising interest in purchasing shares listed in New Zealand and easing interest in
Most results from this month’s survey are very close to those for the previous one. Agents still report the withdrawal of first home buyers and investors, weak attendance at auctions and open homes, falling prices, minimal offshore interest, and no FOMO. Buyers are highly concerned about high interest rates and access to finance but show no rising worries about their employment. 69% of buyers are reported by agents to be displaying FOOP fear of over paying. But like a reasonable number of our measures, this gauge is becoming less Overall,negative.thesurvey results show that the residential real estate market around New Zealand remains weak. But the degree of that weakness is showing early signs of pulling back.
This survey gives insight into changes in the asset types people are favouring. I’ll be using it to track the slow move away from residential property investment. About 1,200 responses.
Crockers & Tony Alexander Investor Insight
• Fewer investors are finding their bank to be tough on them.
This survey gives insight into property demand from investors and first home buyers from the unique position of mortgage brokers. We can also gain insight regarding how banks are changing lending policies towards property buyers. Usually near 70 responses.
• Investors continue to be largely absent as buyers, but the stepping back of first home buyers could be near an end depending on their ability to get finance.
The main themes to come through from the statistical and anecdotal responses include these.
Mortgages.co.nz & Tony Alexander Mortgage Advisors Survey
This survey gives insight into the plans of residential property investors. It delivers insight into the impact of policy and interest rate changes.
• Investors are increasingly pulling back from selling their properties despite rising interest rates.
• The preference for Growth and Aggressive oriented managed funds has risen in the past month despite the deteriorating global outlook.
• Net plans for purchasing residential investment property have risen, but demand for shares in businesses exposed to housing has eased.
• The proportion of investors planning to raise their rents in the coming year has fallen to the lowest level since we started our survey in June 2021. The average rent planned to be sought is also at a record low for our survey at 5.7% from 6.3% in March.
• We passed the peak credit crunch period early this year but as yet availability of finance cannot be considered generous.
• A net 14% of investors say it is now hard to find good tenants a quick turnaround from the net 15% in March who said it was easy.
• No firm evidence yet exists of greater plans to reduce debt as interest rates rise and deductibility of interest expense from taxable incomes declines.
Confidential to the email recipient Page | 17 Australian listed shares possibly reflecting resource price declines.
• Net demand for crypto assets and precious metals is easing at the moment.
The18.
First, surprise is a valuable weapon for a central bank. Yes, they want to signal to the markets where they plan taking things. But complacency about the certainty of future rate changes can lead to excessive risk taking and greater interest rate volatility down the track. Given that the Reserve Bank is explicitly instructed to avoid instability in things like interest rates, shocking the markets now and then is useful for curbing potential for high volatility.
Next week the Reserve Bank will review their monetary policy settings and the near universal expectation is that they will lift the official cash rate from 2.5% to 3.0% and signal that they intend pushing the rate higher in order to ensure high inflation does not become entrenched in the Faireconomy.enough.
Also, don’t completely rule out some hints appearing in a speech by one of the senior Afterpeople.all, having messed up by loosening too much for too long last year, if the Reserve Bank
Nothing I write here or anywhere else in this publication is intended to be personal advice and you should discuss your financing and investment options with a professional. Rate review next week
But there are two things to give thought to which at some point will surprise the markets and cause a decent shift down in wholesale borrowing costs beyond the near 0.7% or so falls which have already happened since the middle of June.
My point is that as data develop indicating easing inflationary pressures the Reserve Bank will look to pause its rate rise cycle if not in terms of actual rate changes in terms of the language they Therefore,use. while there is a chance they soften their tone at next Wednesday’s cash rate review, more probably the new wording will come through at the review after that on October 5.
people in the Reserve Bank are not stupid. The chances are that they are now aware of this deficiency on their part and will tend to give greater weighting to real world economic indicators. After all, this is what we all do in various aspects of our lives from learning how much we can drink and not get into trouble, to learning what tactics fail on the rugby field and adapting. I guess we’re still waiting for the proper adjustments to be made in that regard.
Interest Rates
Second, what is it that the Reserve Bank has most recently learned about its monetary policy behaviour? They have developed a tendency to dismiss evidence on what the economy is really doing if it disagrees with what their models tell them is happening and is going to happen. Our central bank has developed flaws under its current leadership and one of them is excessive reliance on economic models which have not worked since at least 2007. The models failed to forecast inflation in 2014 15 and again in 2017
The following graphs show levels of the one, two, three, and five year fixed mortgage rates over the past three decades and are included each week in Tview Premium.
Confidential to the email recipient Page | 19 messes up again by now tightening too much for too long, a wholesale replacement of senior personnel would seem in order. This week wholesale interest rates have gone down then up then down in response to fluctuating worries about world growth altering expectations that central banks will start cutting their cash rates before the end of 2023. The inflation number out of the United States last night was much better than expected so there remains a likely downward bias to rate movements in the near future Currently the fixed rates facing banks for lending to customers at fixed rates look not much different from last week. My current expectation for the one year fixed mortgage rate in August each year is shown in the first column of the table below. I focus on that rate because there are many people who have fixed one year repeatedly since 2009 and the strategy has worked very well. The second column shows what the one year rate will average over the next 2 , 3 , 4 , and 5 year periods. The last column shows the current best 2 5 year fixed rates charged by the lenders I track. Forecast Rolling Current 1 year average fixed averages rate rates 2022 5.19 5.19 1 yr 2023 5.75 5.47 5.39 2 yr 2024 5.00 5.31 5.89 3 yr 2025 4.25 5.05 6.05 4 yr 2026 4.00 4.84 6.19 5 yr If these forecasts prove correct (I’d give that a 10% probability), rolling one year fixed will deliver an average rate for the next two years of 5.47%, three years 5.31%, four years 5.05%, and five years 4.84%. If I were a borrower, what would I do? I’d probably just fix one year To see the interest rates currently charged by major lenders go to www.mortgages.co.nz
Confidential to the email recipient Page | 20 These next four graphs show the margins for fixed rate loans. You can use them to get a feel for whether rates offered by banks are at unusually and potentially unsustainably low or high levels and could change even without their borrowing costs altering. A round of cuts to the three and five year rates look likely soon, but given the lack of customer borrowing at those terms the banks will feel in no hurry to move and I wouldn’t feel encouraged to fix long for quite some time anyway.
Links to publications Tony’s View Spending Plans Survey Tony’s Thoughts Vlog REINZ & Tony Alexander Real Estate OneroofSurvey weekly mortgages.co.nzcolumn& Tony Alexander Mortgage Advisors Survey Tony Alexander Regional Property Report Crockers & Tony Alexander Investor InvestingInsights Insights with Tony Alexander Handling high interest rates Handling staff shortages Handling high cost of living To enquire about advertising in Tony Alexander publications email me at tony@tonyalexander.nz This publication has been provided for general information only. Although every effort has been made to ensure this publication is accurate the contents should not be relied upon or used as a basis for entering into any products described in this publication. To the extent that any information or recommendations in this publication constitute financial advice, they do not take into account any person’s particular financial situation or goals. We strongly recommend readers seek independent legal/financial advice prior to acting in relation to any of the matters discussed in this publication. No person involved in this publication accepts any liability for any loss or damage whatsoever which may directly or indirectly result from any advice, opinion, information, representation or omission, whether negligent or otherwise, contained in this publication.
