These days, property investor Steve Goodey doesn't bother buying anything that isn't worth at least $1 million.

He now has 30 tenanted properties, including boarding houses, houses with granny flats and Airbnb properties.

He has been investing since he was a young man, first with an interest in one of his parents' properties when he was 18 – although he says he "squandered" the proceeds of that on beer in Europe and had to start again when he returned aged about 23.

Goodey began with a couple of flats in the Hutt Valley and continued to invest and grow his real estate portfolio until he switched to full-time property investing at the end of his 20s.

Now, he coaches other people into property investment and said he saw a lot of older people who wished they had started earlier.

 "The most successful property investors in the last 10 years are probably the wives of successful husbands, or husbands with stable income who are happy to have the wife invest in real estate as a kitchen table project."

Official data backs him up - it shows that the property market is firmly in the hands of those aged over 50.

People aged 55 to 64 are 14.7 per cent of the population but have 27.9 per cent of the country's net wealth.

And that's helping them to increase their wealth at a much faster rate than those still trying to buy their first homes or investment properties.

Stats NZ's household net worth data shows that people aged 45 to 74 own the most valuable property in New Zealand. They also have the lowest debt and so the highest net property assets.

People aged 55 to 64 are 14.7 per cent of the population but have 27.9 per cent of the country's net wealth.

They have $143.4 billion in real estate assets between them and only $30.2 billion in real estate debt, compared to $141.3b in assets for 25 to 54-year-olds and $56.25b in debt.

People aged 55 to 64 saw their real estate net worth increase by 23.5 per cent between 2015 and 2018.

Those aged over 65 have $112.7b in real estate assets and $8.32b in real estate debt.

"Because many people's main asset is the house they live in, changes to the value of residential property has a big impact on household net worth," Stats NZ labour market and household statistics senior manager Jason Attewell said.

The New Zealand Property Investors Federation has just 15 per cent of its members aged under 40. More than a third are between 51 and 60.

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Property investors own about a third of New Zealand's housing stock and are buying at a rate of a quarter of purchases. 

Infometrics economist Brad Olsen said it was clear the older cohort in New Zealand had much more exposure to the property market.

"Younger people not only don't have the assets but young people getting on to the housing ladder are taking a much bigger debt than the generation before. They're waiting longer to do it. It takes a huge amount of deposit. It's taking longer to buy and longer to pay it off."

He said the 15 to 24-year-old age group was the only one that had a decline in real estate assets between 2015 and 2018 as their liabilities increased by 55 per cent.

Olsen said more young people were wondering whether they would ever be able to buy a house. There was a risk that there could be a generation locked out of the property market – or if they could get in, would have to spend most of their lives paying the debt off.

That would mean they had less to give to their children when they died, which could exacerbate the existing gap between property owners and renters.

He said something needed to happen now if there was to be a fix within the next 20 years. "If we don't start now we are locking it in for the generation to come."

Economist at The Opportunities Party leader Geoff Simmons agreed there was a significant generational divide.

"Of course, the children of the parents lucky enough to own multiple homes will probably benefit from that so there's a generational and a class divide."

He said United States data showed that the millennial generation was the first one to be worse off than their parents. "I have no reason to suspect that New Zealand is any different."

Young people had been left behind by the property market because there had been surges in immigration, a tax system that encouraged investment in property, and low interest rates, which made buying cheap for those who had a deposit.

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He said house price inflation needed to be stopped for the next 15 years, and 30 years in some places, to give younger people the same opportunities of ownership that their parents' generation had. "We need to kill capital gain, not tax it."

Simmons said tax had driven market distortions and tax would be the only way to right the imbalance quickly. His party wants a "risk-free rate method" in which significant assets attract the same tax bill they would if the equity in the asset was in a bank deposit. 

Economist Shamubeel Eaqub said it was unlikely that ageing property owners would pass their assets on in a way that would rectify the imbalance. Older people move less often than young families, and despite predictions of people shifting en masse to retirement villages, were increasingly "ageing in place" in their family homes.

Many older people owned investment properties and would continue to use those to fund their retirements, he said, and then pass on all of their houses to their children when they died.

"What it means is it will go to a few more people but more likely than not it will be people who already own homes because most people who have homes and investment properties will have already helped their kids into home ownership."

The generational shift would increase the housing wealth among people who were already in the property market, cementing the country's "landed gentry", he said.