Property investors say the housing market has gotten up a head of steam and not entirely due to them.

Property investors say they are being unfairly blamed for the ever-widening property boom now spreading to the regions.

House prices are rising across the country by $10,000 a month, prompting speculation that the Reserve Bank might outline further measures to curb house prices on Thursday.

Some of those measures could be "debt-to-income" limits for borrowers, raising the minimum equity that Auckland investors need for a home loan, or by increasing loan to value ratios (LVRs) generally across the country.

Property Investors Federation executive director Andrew King said investors were feeling unfairly targeted.

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"Where house prices are at the moment is due to a huge number of factors," King said.

Very low interest rates, the slowness of the housing system and "unprecedented" migration were all big factors, he said.

Everyone wanted to help first-home buyers. "But the way they're going about it is to hurt what they see as people making too much money, and what they're really hurting is the tenant. And that's about a third of our population."

Changes would take time and migration could easily turn again, King said.

"And that could happen just as all this building and infrastructure being planned is coming to the fore.

"It's a very tricky situation for [the] Government and I think everyone needs to realise that there are no easy or fast solutions to this."

King also rejected the view that investors were driving high prices in Auckland.

Long-term investors tended to be "price-takers rather than price-makers" because they had to make the rent cover the outgoings.

Owner-occupiers were often "desperate for a place and they tend to outbid investors".

Figures showing that investors made up about 46 per cent of the Auckland market were not unexpected, given that about 42 per cent of properties in Auckland were rental properties.

Ashley Church, chief executive of Property Institute representing valuers, said that argument did not completely wash with him.

Many investors owned multiple properties, and having 46 per cent share of the market concentrated in investors' hands was high.

"That's a lot more people than probably the market can stand for any period of time," Church said.

Andrew Bruce, Auckland Property Investors president and an established property investor, said the regional boom in house prices was to be expected because Auckland properties no longer gave the rental yields they needed.

However, he felt the regional demand was not just being driven by investors, but also by other house buyers who were afraid of missing out.

Any changes by the Reserve Bank targeting investors would undeniably have an impact, but he said the previous Auckland-targeted measures had distorted the market.

"If the Reserve Bank comes in tomorrow and decides we're going to put this loan-to-value ratio across the country than that puts all investors, whether you're in Auckland or Invercargill on a level-playing field."

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