Each year we publish the Regional Economic Profile we add an extra year’s data and revise the historical employment and GDP series. There are multiple reasons for the revision of history. For some regions the various sources of revision can cancel each other out resulting in very small revisions in GDP and employment. For other regions the sources of revisions can conspire together and result in larger revisions.

This Top 10, by Benje Patterson, explores ways of getting into financial health and avoiding debt-traps from spending increases to your home’s ratings valuation.

The Labour-NZ First coalition has earmarked $1 billion per annum for regional development. Strong business cases will be needed by local authorities vying for a slice of these funds. Don’t over-rely on GDP in these business cases.

Benje Patterson recently wrote a guest Top 10 post on interest.co.nz.  At the risk of sounding like a bore, his post dealt with the housing market.  But instead of lamenting high house prices, or crystal ball gazing for an appropriate time to enter (or exit) the market, his post focused on the personal finance implications of having so much money tied up in housing.

Airbnb’s explosive growth has been integral in helping to ease accommodation bottlenecks in the New Zealand tourism sector over the past year. There are now around 20,000 listings on Airbnb in New Zealand and hosts earned a total of $55m over the March 2017 year. Of the $55m spent on Airbnb accommodation in New Zealand over the past year, $22m was spent in Auckland and $17m was earned by hosts in Queenstown-Lakes District.

Councils nationwide have begun preliminary work scoping out key issues for their 2018 Long-Term Plan – a document that sets out each Council’s intentions for the next decade. The LTP process is an arduous one that puts the focus on localised issues affecting infrastructure, business and community development across all townships and communities within each territorial authority. Southland District provides an interesting case study for teasing out sub-district insights from Infometrics small area profiles.

Economic conditions in Southland improved slightly in the December quarter, with Infometrics’ provisional estimate of GDP showing growth of 1.4% over the December 2016 year. Improvements were seen across a range of indicators, including retail spending, vehicle sales, guest nights and migration. Traffic flows rose 3.3% over the year.

Infometrics estimates of regional GDP in the Regional Economic Profile are shown in real (or constant) prices. By using real prices, we remove the distractionary effect of inflation and allow you to meaningfully compare underlying production within each local economy (GDP) from one year to the next.

Queenstown-Lakes District was New Zealand’s top performing territorial authority during 2016, with employment expanding by a stonking 10.3% over the March 2016 year. This growth was almost four times the 2.7% rate of employment expansion seen nationally, and well above the 5.9% employment growth recorded by second-placed Western Bay of Plenty District. This article reveals more about Queenstown’s stellar year, along with a sneak peek at Infometrics’ 2016 Regional Economic Profile (official release: February 28) to see which other places also had rapid employment growth.

2016 was a ground-breaking year for domestic aviation, with competition heating up following the launching of Jetstar regional services. Growth was particularly strong in Jetstar’s four new regional destinations – Napier, New Plymouth, Palmerston North, and Nelson. The big question is where will Jetstar fly to next?