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The reports began shortly before 8.30am on Thursday. Photo: AFP / Gerard Julien Microsoft says it is looking into reports some of its services are down around New Zealand. Products such as Outlook, Azure cloud computing and Teams were affected. There were thousands of reports of Microsoft failures across the country, according to DownDetector, a site which monitors internet outages. Parliamentary Services said the Parliament precinct was experiencing problems, suggesting a downed server might be to blame. It came a day after Microsoft services including Outlook and Minecraft were subject to a cyber-attack, and nearly two weeks after a botched software rollout by a third party took down millions of computers running Microsoft Windows. The reports began shortly before 8.30am on Thursday. ...

New Zealand's house values remain about 16 percent below the boom-time peak of $982,918 in January 2022. File photo. Photo: 123rf House values have fallen for the fifth month in a row, but cheaper prices are not expected to move an abundance of housing stock until interest rates get the chop. Corelogic's latest home value index shows there was a 0.5 percent fall in July, which takes the total decline from February's mini peak to 2.5 percent. The median value for stock nationally is now $827,515. Head of research Nick Goodall said a significant drop in interest rates was needed to get the market growing and moving again. "The dynamics are a little bit in balance as there's reason for demand, but that demand is held back by tight credit. "Even though investors might be in a better environ...

The debt situation has slightly improved, but more consumers are still behind on their power bills. File photo. Photo: Kelly Sikema / Unsplash The country's debt burden is stabilising, but consumers are faring better than businesses, according to new data. The latest report from credit bureau Centrix for June showed a slight improvement in the number of people in arrears, falling 9000 to 465,000 on the month before, although were still up 9 percent on a year ago. "Consumer arrears are not materially deteriorating, with only marginal increases and decreases noted from month to month," managing director Keith McLaughlin said. But he said there were pockets of distress. Mortgage repayment arrears were marginally lower at 21,500, although the number in financial hardship has risen by close ...

Auckland suburbs can all look similar from the air, but down on the ground there could be hundreds of thousands of dollars in differences. File photo. Photo: RNZ / Diego Opatowski Would you pay more to live in Khandallah than Ngaio? Or St Heliers rather than Glen Innes? Data from Corelogic suggests buyers do - and the premium paid for a sought-after suburb can be hundreds of thousands of dollars more than its neighbours. Corelogic head of research Nick Goodall looked at the median value of three-bedroom houses in neighbouring suburbs. He found Epsom had a median of $1.92 million compared to a median of $1.52m in next-door Greenlane. St Heliers had a median $1.7m compared to $1.12m in Glen Innes. Mt Eden was a median $1.91m compared to $1.07m in Mt Roskill, Remuera was $1.8m compared to ...