IntroHello. I'm Bernard Hickey with the daily briefing from interest.co.nz...Today, we'll look at home loan affordability and whether the recent house price falls have been enough to improve affordability.We'll also look at the prospects for shared equity home loans. Could we have them within a year and are they a good idea?AffordabilityBut firstly we look at the latest news on housing affordability. The news is better, but it's still very bad, and it won't be healthy again for a very long time unless we see a house price correction, the size of which we've never seen before in New Zealand. More on that in a minute.The Fairfax Media Home Loan affordability survey produced by interest.co.nz shows that home loan affordability improved marginally in January.That's because the median house price fell 1.4%. But most of this gain was wiped out by higher interest rates. Without too much fanfare, longer term fixed mortgage rates have been rising in recent...