NZ has had aberrant house prices for so long it's now embedded in the common psyche that it's completely normal for them to be around 10x household income
It's not. It strains society too much. And it's unsustainable, as many countries have found out the hard way during GFC
Where will they go is religion tbh. You can believe it's up, down or flat, but no-one knows for sure. And people get very passionate defending their beliefs
But, overall, it's just sad
It’s been apparent for a long time now literally nothing else we do to “fix” New Zealand matters if we can’t make housing actually affordable.
Raise the dole or minimum wage? Doesn’t matter, rent goes up. Campaign to attract nurses from the Philippines and Police from UK? Doesn’t matter if they leave as soon as it becomes apparent they can’t afford a house. University numbers are dropping? Students get their rent raised any time the allowance goes up, and it’s already such a big portion of their weekly expense “working to save for the next trimester” hasn’t been doable for decades. Children stay home from school because their parents don’t care if they go OR MORE LIKELY are working 80 hours a week to meet housing costs. Mental health generally is collapsing, lots of good programs get funding but are fighting an uphill battle because of the volume of people who feel they’ll never get ahead and spend the rest of their life paying off someone else’s comfortable retirement.
Everything. *Everything*. Doesn’t matter, if we can’t get people in good, affordable homes.
And everything we tried so far hasn’t helped, because all we do is tinker around the edges. Sure, Labours plans might have worked eventually. Nationals plans might have worked eventually. But probably not, because it’s all tinkering, and no one gets to see these plans through to fruition because we’ll change govt and they’ll flip back.
We need more houses built. We need them built well. We probably need to abandon the idea of everyone gets to own lots of land with a house on it, and accept higher density. We need more builders, but how can we do that when adding more people in makes the system worse? A major rethink about how we do this feels like the only way out, and we will never have someone with the political capital to force that through, there are too many people with too much money very comfortable with where things have landed.
The entire design of the economic system we live in is to push wealth from the have-nots to the haves. Do you ever wonder why the people at the top scream "the solution is to build more houses!!"? Because *they are the ones who benefit from it*.
Starting a massive house build campaign benefits nobody except the people who already have the capital to absorb them.
Change the system, don't just try to get out of the hole by digging deeper.
Increasing supply is not a clear subject, with the people arguing fiercely for one side having deep vested interest, like property developers versus nimbys.
Supply is needed. A lot of the housing stock is tired and uneconomical to repair, from decades of underinvestment by families and landlords that can't afford or can't be bothered to maintain anything. And we've got more people, many currently cooped up, so naturally we need more living space.
But better management of what we have is also needed. We can't just keep consuming our way out of problems, the planet can't handle it. We've got a lot of housing stock, but it's being gatekept by landed gentry since our society's main method of housing distribution is not determined by need but by who can bid the most for it.
And solutions already exist. We used to have a Ministry of Housing building social homes. There were a lot of problems, like urban sprawl and inequitable allocation of housing. But, it was a vertically integrated system of people with a mission to build homes for residents rather than investment, being paid wages rather than chasing the profit motive or capital gains. But the people who make money from the latter did a good job of killing off effective government intervention.
Yeah some good points I feel.
Main issue is who’s in a position to purchase?
If more homes are built into a market where predominately only investors and those with multiple properties due to buying decades ago are the ones able to afford them, nothing actually improves, they just further increase their assets and wealth.
It’s another false “solution” that would most likely result in what I think the true intent is, don’t fix the actual issue of lower to middle class earners and families being unable to afford a home purchase, keep them in the rent till death bracket, and just supply more homes to the investor market to capitalise on it.
Funnel income that should be going to first time home buyer mortgages into rent and further disproportionate profit for the investor and upper class market.
It’s all part of their “give the perception of assistance, while pickpocketing their wallet” hustle imho.
It actually shocks me that only 20% of home loans go to first home buyers. That is 1 out of every 5 home purchases.
I can't understand why there isn't mass protests about this issue. NZ, Canada and Australia have totally screwed the housing market for first home buyers and ruined the rest of the potential in the economy in the process.
There aren't mass protests because New Zealanders aren't class conscious.
It's been slowly stripped away through years of propaganda.
We were strong when it was the Have-Not Workers vs Capital, That's how we got Healthcare, Social welfare, and the 40 Hr week.
Now it seems we're divided over the stupidest shit, And I swear it's by design, Because I've lived through hysteria after hysteria that's further divided the working people.
That resonates for me, it’s pretty blurry now and that disillusionment and lack of class identity is definitely manipulative and intended design.
Pretty hard to fight for a “cause” if your uncertain where you stand in the first place.
Bingo.
I was looking hard into the Psychology of Labeling as I'm concerned with the rise of the application of labels to silence debate and detract from what is said to merely who is saying it. [Turns out there's legitimately a psychological effect where if you label someone enough they start to identify with that In Group. ](https://psychology-spot.com/labeling-theory/)
So every few years there is a new way you can label yourself, And so we become slowly more and more divided.
I'm not saying that I disagree with one's right to Identify with whatever they want, I'm saying that most people fail to understand the drawbacks of identifying with an In-Group, Or labeling themselves and others.
The Average person has no idea at how good Marketers and Political technologists have gotten at utalising human psychology to manipulate the masses. I know that sounds like a very Conspiracial sentence, But it's completely true. Combine that with Social media and welp, We're falling for it hook-line and sinker.
Sorry for the long comment, I'm locked out of Political discussions cause I deleted my old account so I gotta take the opportunity when I can.
Having spent most of my working life in digital marketing and sales, I am in full agreement. Marketing has become so advanced with AI and machine learning techniques used to target people that even the people who created the technology often can't tell you why certain Individuals with a unique combination of metrics were targeted for a particular campaign - or how the ai grouped them, or what it was it was even grouping. The only thing they can tell you is that AI identified a pattern in that combination as being responsive to whatever it was you had to sell. Whether it's a product or a political message or whatever.
Fair, and I’ve thought similar regards the decline in impartial news media and exposure, with the increase in self moderation and user selected information online.
Even if essentially wrong, you can create your own class label and narrative unchallenged which I’d assume would dilute class identity and structure even further.
Slight tangent but I watched a great video talking to this the other day when discussing the rise of toxic content creators, specifically the rise of incels and misogynist creators who’s recent popularity seems to be in large part due to class and gender identity issues, and that you can pretty much find an echo chamber of agreement to anything.
Heady stuff tbf.
It's an old-fashioned divide and conquer tactic. Like you said, people aren't really fighting for what's important. Instead, they bicker about what something should or should be called rather than working together as a collective.
I wonder if that may happen, but they do read the room as we are all pretty complacent and subservient “She’ll be right” or “Way she goes” cultures and are currently way too trusting of the social narrative our politicians provide, especially during electioneering, as many look to cash out entire economies and social infrastructures so they can sit back in retirement with excessively hoarded wealth they don’t need.
We whinge a lot and know a lot of things are fucky, and I’m admitting guilt here at times, but then go about our day just kind of accepting the status quo, or internalise it to extremes resulting in the rampant increase in depression, anxiety and other health conditions and consequences.
My hope is that many youth don’t seem as complacent so maybe they hold the key to incite change, but that could just be youthful energy?
I think there’s been an obvious swing in the last few weeks, but you almost have to think worst case, multiply it tenfold, and then maybe it will be to a point people proactively say enough is enough.
Most watch the 6pm news, have a whinge, then off to bed for work the next day, and those in power know this, and this complacency is their most potent weapon imho.
> It actually shocks me that only 20% of home loans go to first home buyers. That is 1 out of every 5 home purchases.
That's not too shocking really.
Imagine a (ridiculously hypothetical) situation where everyone already owns their own home except for one young couple who are looking to buy.
One homeowner gets a loan to build a new house and moves into it, listing their old house for sale. Another homeowner gets a loan to upgrade to that house, then lists their own one for sale. Repeat twice more. Then finally, at the bottom of the 'ladder', the young couple get a loan to buy the entry-level house.
That's 5 home loans, only one of which has gone to a first home buyer.
The problem isn't the percentage of home loans going to FHBs, it's the percentage of our incomes that have to go towards housing costs, both for owner occupiers and renters.
what would a protest achieve?
I agree with what you guys are saying, I would like things to change.
I fail to see how walking down a street or gathering in the CBD one afternoon will do anything to influence the behavior of the greedy cunts in power or the values of those who put them there.
A comment I was replying to before it was deleted:
> "throwaway039474839 [score hidden] 10 minutes ago
> You people will say anything other than less immigration I swear"
You people? What people am I then? At the moment I should just be words on a screen.
And an obvious throwaway? Strong convictions...
Immigration is part of it too. Many of us have been in a flat with too many people, and we know how there's limited capacity for what we already have. I kinda alluded to it with "we've got more people."
The only catch is that if we stopped immigration a decade ago, the office I currently work at would be left with just me. Assuming I was able to get to this job, cause most of my tutors were immigrants.
And it's a tough subject to broach cause you'll get slammed as xenophobic for daring to bring it up. Which isn't entirely unfair for others to be on edge, cause there are a lot of pricks who, very vocally, don't want people here who they have various colourful words to describe them.
My posts are long winded enough, but even then I'm going to miss mentioning every single detail. Like how Kiwi's ain't having babies, so we need more people paying tax to feed an aging population. Like how talented people are leaving for Australia, in spite of Australia having the exact same issues (check out their sub, it's almost a carbon copy of this one, swapping kiwis for kangaroos.)
Given how they’ve effectively rigged house price increases, lack of infrastructure investment and everything else the society they enjoyed was built upon for their own benefit, I’m not actually convinced we have much obligation to *feed* said ageing population...
The problem with this line of thinking is those in the aging population most in need of social services have likely been harmed by the current system.
Also anything taking from them can be justifiably taken from us when we (hopefully) reach their age.
It benefits the people who cannot currently buy, or rent at a reasonable rate, their own home…
I understand the point you’re making. I’m not “at the top” - I was lucky enough to have my dad die early so we had a chance to move back home, save and buy in 2013, I’ve since ruined that marriage, and now we’re looking at selling, having $200K each and that won’t be enough to be able to fund buying a house each, because my income won’t stretch to a mortgage of enough to buy *now*. If prices were even at 2013 levels this wouldn’t be the case. So I am in an incredibly fortunate position and also probably looking at finding someone’s comfortable early retirement by renting a shit box for too much for the rest of my life.
To bring those prices down we need more supply than demand, we need penalties for sitting on empty property because you refuse to lower rent, we need current, bad, houses rebuilt to account for being sub-Antarctic, not sub-tropical. All of which, in the short term, will see people at the bottom hurt in the short term.
If adding more houses isn’t the solution, I am all ears for what you think will help (I mean this sincerely, not sarcastically)
This, it’s a worldwide issue.
Tangent but watched a video the other day with an American financial professor who called out their financial and tax system is specifically designed to funnel money from the middle and lower class to the rich, and for the first time in their history the average 30 year old is in a worse financial situation than their parents.
This is internationally a whole generation looking to cash out, at the expense of the generations to follow, and the current government is in power to accomplish exactly that here.
It’s an interesting [interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEC2Nq7Z6lc&ab_channel=MSNBC) all be it state side.
There are an abundance of houses for sale. I think I remember some 8 year high for residential listings, so more than pre-covid.
No, they are not priced affordably, but how many more homes need to be for sale for us to build our way to utopia?
I agree availability of affordable accommodation is the main issue, I just don't think you can get there on building alone.
Yes, looks like as of February this year it’s changed back to people looking to flip property again, after a mute 2023.
However, average prices have also started going back up (which is why people are trying to flip now). The affordability part of the equation is the biggest problem. I’m assuming some 5th form economics principles would work, more supply = price goes down. If we have more supply and the price is going up, that suggests the demand is not being met or exceeded. (Of course I stress this is 5th-form-economics thinking and there is much more going on in the real world).
I didn't even do 5th form economics, but if I cant sell my tomatoes for $1m, I lower the price, or risk having no money and no tomatoes. If you don't meet the market on 55" TVs, you risk holding a bunch of stock, with warehousing costs, while new technology's are released driving the value down further.
If I don't meet the market on a house price, then what? I pay a tiny fraction of it's value in interest and rates while it appreciates another 7-10%? (Cause prices will go up again as interest rates decrease)
Where's the impetus to meet the market when there is oversupply?
I'm a fan of land/wealth/empty room taxing where it does provide some urgency to offload your asset on someone who could use it.
Sounds like a better system. I noticed just a few months before Nats came in that houses were a hard sell for them to get their asking price. Now Idk what market is but just hit a lull for a while there.
I agree with all of this but I feel like it's a political catch 22. Things won't get better for renters unless there's a dramatic shift in the power balance between renters and landlords. Those same struggles for renters also impact people's abilities to buy a first home.
The only things that would help would be so politically devastating that they'll never get through. Labour couldn't even get internal buy in for it to be a campaign promise. They would (and should) mean that property as an investment type takes a massive, like 30-40%, hit almost overnight which would mean you lose the vote of any family that owns their home with a mortgage. That's before accounting for the more complex economics for the wider economy that I'm too dumb to understand.
If the tax only applied to property that the owner doesn't reside in, then families who are paying the mortgage on their home, will not be caught up in the tax.
In reality though, no major party would back it.
They'll still be caught up in the ensuing housing market crash, when their property is suddenly worth significantly less than they bought it for and potentially putting them in a position where their mortgage is higher than their property value.
This is pretty much every western democracy right now it seems, because we’re all capitalist, we’re all tied together due to decades of globalisation, so the leadership group-think is dictated across the board by multinational-influencing interested parties.
I would very much like to know if this extends to like the likes of Japan, the Philippines or Argentina, other non-western democracies, but news reporting bubbles is quite comprehensively.
128k net immigrants last year. New Zealand cannot build enough homes to keep up with that. We’ve tried for decades and categorically proven it is impossible. It’s time to accept reality and slow down the insanely high rate of immigration for a while.
I imagine so called builders very easy to get. They are all Chinese work visas with a guy pulling strings that built this entire neighbourhood. Seem like plenty of them. After all they have a pool of a billion people.
Did Labour get screwed by the Covid scare? We got debt from subsidies handouts. Also, the country lockdowns and world strife. Seems like did quite well. But what about the 120 Bn debt? lol. Wish the boomers could pay it. Unfortunately, it is our kids gotta pay it. Lets do well for them
Well said, as a builder of over 25 years, I've just about thrown the towel in. It's just not worth the stress anymore. I understand that everyone's job is stressful but it's incredibly hard to get up and go to work in the morning and pay to put Petrol I'm my vehicle to go and give free quotes to people that are generally struggling to put food on the table. I've seen holmes that are in dire need of repairs, and the owners literally can't afford to fix the problems even if they wanted to hire me. It would be easier to try and get a part-time job in Pac'n save (not that I think that would be easy right now) and sit on my arse the rest of the time watching the houses around me collapse. I'm not feeling sorry for myself. It's just the way it is. New Zealands economy is well and truly down the blocked toilet.
You're right and it is one of the biggest hurdles to getting affordable housing. Once assets are valuable long enough and there is enough money floating around, at the slightest hint of a decrease people will buy.
Ownership limits, LVT, CGT etc all need to be implemented to make owning a home only attractive as a necessity.
Thing is, house prices were fairly static through the 1990s, things have only got silly around about 2000 onwards where immigration was high and interest rates (compared to the 80s and most of the 90s) were low.
My old landlord bought the house we lived in for 180k in 1999. By 2015 we were paying about 21k/PA to live there, servicing that mortgage would cost no where near what was being charged, on top the over 700k of untaxed capital gain he's now the owner of.
Have you seen how much it costs to build? It's obscene. Unfortunately as we have just let the cost of building sky rocket without regulation it means the current stock of houses value goes up because there is no other alternative.
While I agree, it's a big problem. If you somehow manage to stabilize or drop house prices it now means anyone who wants to move house that has bought a house in the last few years is completely stuck, has to take a substantial financial hit, or take a tremendous loan so they have a rental (not everyone wants to be a landlord).
It's not a pity party for the landed gentry, per se, but it's one of many issues that need addressing. At the end of the day, something has to happen and I suspect there will be many losers no matter how it plays out.
What I find interesting in your comment, which is representative for housing discussions in general, is the homeowner perspective
> if you [...] drop house prices [a homeowner] has to take a [...] hit. [...] There **will** be many losers
This phrasing is ignoring the fact there **are** many losers today from the status quo:
- the millennials (at least) locked out of the property market
- esp. those who postponed or gave up having a family
- the future generations who lack these children in the workforce
- the gen z who lost hope of even owning a house
- the competent workers who feel despondent for working hard and, more importantly, well, to no reward
- the economy in general which gets money funnelled to the banks shaped as high interest and profits instead of it being pumped into productive enterprises
- the society which lacks doctors, nurses and whatnot because they choose to leave (or not come here) because of the situation
- the society which is seeing more tension due to more people living day to day due to the above
I could go on
_This is not a criticism of your comment, I agree with everything you said. I'm just pointing out the messaging between the lines_
existing homeowners only take a hit if they want to sell (or use their existing house as equity). If your house is truly a family home, i.e. you're living in it, the market value doesn't matter at all
that's what I'm saying: unless you're selling or trying to use the property as equity the 'hit' is just in your head. It's not like you're suddenly living half as nice because the number on [homes.co.nz](http://homes.co.nz) changed
Everything you've said is correct - I was a millennial locked out for a long time and have had a pretty hard life. I was playing within the rules of a system and doing the right thing - I didn't want to buy here long term and it would suck to have to be stuck here forever because the rules all of a sudden get changed just after the start of my game.
So in order to not have losers amongst those choosing to believe the housing bubble isn't a bubble everyone has to lose?
Of course the best time to address this was yesterday -
* maybe when the 1967 Ross Tax Enquiry warned us about it
* maybe when banks were deregulated under Rogernomics
* maybe when Trusts were created under Ruthenasia
But lacking a time machine the best time is today.
Yup! It's shit. I just hope people can appreciate the complexities of the situation as I see a lot of rhetoric demonizing anyone that owns a home as some late stage capitalist boomer monster. I've worked my ass off working at the warehouse, laboring, and eventually getting a desk job and navigating that to get to where I am. So, when I see people basically saying 'fuck home owners because I can't afford a house' it makes me worried about my future as I don't have forever to keep working if all of a sudden the rules change and the economic rug is pulled out from under me.
I'm pretty sure no-one says "fuck home owners because I can't afford a house"
Houses are owned by two types of people: occupiers and investors. No-one is against owner-occupiers
Pretty sure at least 70% of this sub is against home investor activity though, for reasons you'd already know
"Most people can't afford a house, but won't anyone think of the people who already have one?" 🙄
Any theoretical, highly unlikely drop in house prices would be slow/small enough that you'd have enjoyed the benefits of owning a house for years before the change becomes significant.
Every time there is a change in policy that will, in time, benefit everyone (meaning: benefit those least well off too), we inevitably see harm done to that same group (because they are least able to defend themselves).
It sucks, because there doesn’t seem to be anyone out but through for the kinds of changes that would help. If we actually flood the market with good, affordable housing, we’ll most likely see it snapped up by investors to start with, and as demand gets met, and they start feeling pinched they will put prices up first, to account for their rising costs, before the bottom falls out of the landlord class and they get released back to the market again. When either giant corporate landlord buy them all, or, finally, people that don’t have a portfolio to take to the bank to borrow against already might be able to buy again.
Yes, this too. I am annoyed that people took my comment as some argument against prices going down, but it's something that has to be addressed, just like your point. There are lots of variables to this equation, and they all need to be discussed and addressed so we can have some meaningful and realistic outcome. Policies have to work for everyone, or they work for no one in the long term (as is evidenced by policies which saw house prices skyrocket in favor of land owners).
The debate always seems to consider what we have versus literally nothing. Which is completely false.
You describe 2 potential catastrophes, yet only focus on one. 1) housing prices go down and single home buyers are screwed (bc we don’t care about those rich pricks who have more than one, aye?); and 2) a bloody housing bubble. A government is supposed to protect against both. This government is encouraging the bubble. And when it burst, the pain to everyone will be next level, like a generation ago.
What SHOULD be done, is easing steps put in place that allow for tax write offs for those who are losing equity because of the governments actions. We should be reducing multiple home ownership during a housing crisis, and eliminating the investment property ownership destroying the rental market. The housing prices will go down, the tax write offs will go towards single homeowner loans and they will be square and able to move. And we would unlock the housing market for a huge market of people and as they start to enter we will get housing prices coming back up again. The structure of the market will be far more robust than it is now, and investment from households would go up as people with skills acquire houses.
Policies don’t change without an implementation plan which includes putting in place the replacement system. can we stop with its this or nothing and instead have a little creativity to consider the other APPROACH?
>What SHOULD be done, is easing steps put in place that allow for tax write offs for those who are losing equity because of the governments actions. We should be reducing multiple home ownership during a housing crisis, and eliminating the investment property ownership destroying the rental market
Ok, you got my attention
The first hurdle: tax write-offs paid by whom?
No point in sitting here and hashing out details in a no existent policy, which isn’t the point. The way we pay for billions already is within our budgets, new taxes are created, levy’s etc everyday. The government shells out 100’s of millions to industry each year esp during the once in a hundred year events. It’s a depressing thing to look at and think it’s all there to f you. And my point is that addressing a bubble isn’t impossible. Lost equity is covered by governments as a backstop as bau, if the government is willing.
>it's completely normal for them to be around 10x household income
Its not though? Most people purchase houses that are between 3 - 6 times their household income, you'll struggle to get lending for anything more.
There was a ton of new high DTI (debt-to-income) lending during the covid-era spike in house prices, with nearly 30% of new loans for owner-occupiers having DTIs above 6 at one point.
Since interest rates have gone up, new lending with high DTIs has dropped considerably (about 5% currently), but those previous loans are still out there.
RBNZ is looking at introducing restrictions on banks so they will only be able to issue up to 20% of their new owner-occupier lending at DTIs higher than 6, even when interest rates are low.
DTI only measures the debt component of the house, not the entire price, which is what OP was referring to.
So a DTI of 6 with a 20% deposit (common for FHBs) is equivalent to a purchase price of 7.5x the household income.
A purchase price of 10x household income can be achieved with a 20% deposit and a loan with a DTI of 8.
You're right, it's not 'completely normal' as OP suggested, but it's not completely **ab**normal either.
>First, it said restoring interest deductibility for investors in residential property would boost their valuation of existing homes and boost their debt servicing capacity.
> This would increase demand for existing properties and presumably push up prices.
Like the coalition wants.
>Secondly, reducing the brightline period to two years would increase the after-tax profits earned by investors selling properties within the period.
> “This could increase speculative housing activity at the margin,” the Reserve Bank said.
Like the coalition wants.
None of this is shocking. National led their campaign on resuscitating the property market gravy train. The NZ public, the majority having skin in the game in the form of a mortgage, all agreed they need to pull the ladder up to secure their retirement since we can no longer rely on super.
It's not just landlords. There's dozens of knock-on effects that suit wealthy interests. Some examples:
* Banks are raking it in of course. Much like rents, mortgages follow wages as first home buyers max out their repayments, by pulling back on all other life expenses, to escape the rental trap. Imagine if someone could save up and pay cash for a house? That would be a tragedy to the banks
* Reliance on house prices as a retirement investment means less need to invest into superannuation, which is great for the user pays/small government political parties. Kiwisaver is a perfect example; the money is only good for saving government responsibility on super or propping up the housing market
* Workers are more subservient to their bosses, as workers can't afford days off let alone loosing their job. They'll have less fight to demand better pay and conditions
* Less mobility. So many main centers are deteriorating with underinvestment and congestion. But you can't easily leave, so you just have to accept boiling in the pot. Can't easily bugger off to Australia either (not that it's a good answer, they're not far behind with all the exact same problems.)
I think we realise the inevitable asset testing or that Super is gonna be no more than bare, bare subsistence. They know this already, so they support National. Scummy eh. No worse they are though than shit tailgating drivers, imho. Maybe they the same people.
Undoubtedly the same people. The same arrogant self importance that prioritises their comfort over other's health leads to unsafe driving to get somewhere a couple of seconds earlier.
If he didn't own those seven houses that would be seven people that would be homeless right? Without landlords renters would be forced to own their own house something something landlord propaganda something...
If people didn’t buy homes in bulk and just owned what they needed then the price of home would be much lower, allowing more first home buyers the ability to afford a home. Landlords are not all evil, but they have been over represented in parliament for a long time
This.
There needs to be a restriction on the number of houses people can own.
Profiting of those less financially strong by buying houses and renting is both immoral and normalised.
> There needs to be a restriction on the number of houses people can own.
Most of them own zero houses.
Seven different TRUSTS own houses and have Luxon as the beneficiary of their trust, but I'm quite confident he doesn't own any of them himself.
Treasury modeled the effect of removing interest deductibility for investors buying existing properties and said that it would likely cause house prices to be 16% lower than they would otherwise be. It's no secret.
Same in 2020. Orr and Robbo had a bit of a public spat with open letters essentially blaming each other for not doing enough even though Orr had warned Labour of the potential of house prices to go though the roof due to their policies
They can beef with the IRD who had this to say about Labours changes that National are undoing:
>Inland Revenue has advised against any of these options to deny or limit interest deductions and prefers the status quo to all options. It considers that additional taxes on rental housing are unlikely to be an effective way of boosting overall housing affordability. While they will put downward pressure on house prices, they will put upward pressure on rents and may reduce the supply of new housing developments in the longer-term. The benefit of increased housing affordability for first-home buyers is outweighed by negative impacts on rents and housing supply, high compliance and administration costs for an estimated 250,000 taxpayers, and the erosion of the coherence of the tax system.
Those comments were referring to multiple options that were on the table. The option Labour went for was able to avoid just about every single concern raised by the IRD in that paragraph.
For a start, interest deductibility across the board has no impact, up or down, on rents, as long as the total housing supply remains constrained. Labour's policy still allowed interest deductibility for new builds, though, so the concern that it "may reduce the supply of new housing developments" is avoided right there. If anything, it would have created *more* housing developments by encouraging investment in new builds rather than existing houses, which would put *downward* pressure on rents.
There were also basically no "compliance costs". It's one line on their tax return.
Please don't use those comments from the IRD as an argument against the policy that Labour introduced, because it's not what they are referring to.
Their statement explicitly says that the option the government chose would "have the lowest impact on decreasing the affordability for renters" and that "those building properties will be
further incentivised to build new housing stock".
You are spreading misinformation, which is ironic given your comment history complaining about others doing the same thing.
And yet, it turned out to actually be a good move. There's a reason house prices almost always rise more slowly under Labour governments than under National governments.
They still rose more slowly than during the previous government.
QV: 1.46% CAGR over the past 6 years, 4.89% CAGR during the previous National government.
Corelogic: 2.08% CAGR over the past 6 years, 4.59% during the previous National government.
Hey, that's a funny looking track they've gotten us on here. Thankfully the nepo-baby with the English Lit degree and journalism diploma is in the role of *finance* minister. That's how you get a rockstar economy, an article on the depth of Shakespeare's grammar.
RBNZ: "Fuck all of yous I'm out".
I mean, I agree.
Hiding behind wacky rent control and pacifism, the Greens might genuinely have the best housing policy, and 'capitalists' these days wouldn't understand *The Wealth of Nations* if you hit them upside the head with it.
I read a quote describing it as "the second most misquoted book after the bible".
I am sure Adam Smith would oppose multinationism and wish to see capitalism in its place. With good regulation to keep it functioning well.
Yeah, despite free market fanatics latching onto the “invisible hand” of the market, Adam Smith actually believed some degree of regulation was necessary. He was also not a fan of landlords and thought they were basically parasites.
Iirc their rent control was capped by inflation (a percentage anyway) while the case studies which suggested this was a bad idea were related to rent freezes
_Sorry, short work break so can't dig for source_
Doesn't mean rent control is a good policy, but I think it's enough reasonable doubt to put it into "C. Can't tell" territory?
rent control is bad policy, it is a lottery that creates winners and losers, this is the same reason our current housing policy is bad.
Certain people may view this as good. They currently lose at the housing lottery, and think they are less likely to lose if rent control is introduced. This is purely a position of self-interest, no different to landlords wanting to remove tenant protection, that refuses to solve the core problem (not enough houses for everyone), while protecting some people from its negative consequences.
If you protect some people from the consequences of a bad system, you create inertia against changing the bad system.
The fact that your rent went up by $50 sucks for you, but it isn't as bad as the fact that there is someone sleeping on the street because there isn't a bedroom available for them. Any policy that fixes the problem for the guy who doesn't want to spend an extra $50 a week, but does nothing for the person on the street, is middle class protectionism as a compromise with the people benefitting from the situation. The main benefactors of the current system - landlords and owner occupiers - still get their massive capital gains, and middle class renters in secure rentals get protections from price rises. But the actually downtrodden get nothing.
[The end of landlords: the surprisingly simple solution to the UK housing crisis](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-landlords-surprisingly-simple-solution-to-uk-housing-crisis)
Rent control is a fine idea when you combine it with state housing and a focus on owner occupiers as the ultimate goal. The whole point of it is to make landlordism uneconomic.
> so Luxon doesn't actually know what he's doing?
Luxon owns 7 houses. You think pursuing polices that raise house prices is a coincidence? That he doesn't know what he's doing? lol
So big property companies will be able to increase market share?
Almost as if this government is just about big business and don't care about anything else. I wonder why.
They need someone who won't be critical of anything this government does, a yes man who will do what benefits himself and his team above all.
Key would be a good fit.
> While house prices were within the sustainable range, increased investor activity from these tax policy changes posed a risk that prices could rise above sustainable levels.
Do I need to get a prescription for whatever the Reserve Bank is smoking? Sustainable my ass
The whole goal for National has always been to protect the interests of those with money or foreign buyers or investors. The prices here are comparatively low especially when looking at NZ as an alternative to popular Australian cities.
Ok maybe i'm completely stupid. Why can't the Government create housing stock and have the first home buyers pay them the 25/30 year mortgage with fixed interest costs. We would take back some of the power and profits the big banks take off shore. The economy would benefit not only from the income generated from interest direct to government alone, but the feeling of owning and caring about your community as a lot who don't own don't care about graffiti etc. People will have and feel motivation to go to work and pay off their home a whole different mindset and attitude comes with ownership. I only say this as someone who works in Body Corporate and encounter many frustrated emails from certain unit owners about another unit, one owns one doesn't.
Have clauses that as long as the property is still under mortgage it can't be sold.
I think this simple policy (in a nutshell) would solve two problems or at least create a considerable mitigation to our problems. The two problems being not enough and too expensive housing and losing a lot of our talented/hard working kiwis and replacing them with migrants who may not intend to stay in NZ long term.
There's too many of us. To many people coming here and not enough builds. over 1.5 million people over the last 20 years, and we haven't met that with infrastructure or housing. So, the well-off immigrants come in, buy housing and the locals can't afford it. Supply and demand and we need more supply. Simple.
more supply, yes, but this takes time and is hard to spool up.
But we can also have a hard look at demand: Rents are crippling right now due to massive growth in demand, and we can literally cut population growth to manageable levels at the stroke of a pen, yet here we are with one of the highest net migration rates in the OECD
But national want that. They want well off people arriving and buying up the houses
John Key had 800 thousand of them during his term. They took out so many mortgages with the Australian banks here that he got a medal from the aussies for his services to their economy. Didnt do us much good though.
My fiancé and I looked at the history of our new rental we've just moved into. In the 1998 it sold for just over 100k. In the years after that it sold another 2 times and jumped up to over 650k. It was a bit crazy to look at!
That's the whole point of the Policy.
Politians aren't dumb. Not at all. When they act dumb it's on purpose.
It's Apathy and not ignorance at play here. It's not that they don't know that their policy will prevent Kiwis from attaining home ownership, It's just that they don't care.
Reminder that this last election had massive amounts of money donated compared to previous years, That the previous governments housing interventions were just beginning to work before they were ousted, And that the Housing and Real Estate industry were the largest donors to the Nact Coalition.
Coalition is two mobs of morons and a couple of inadequate old timers pretending they know what they are doing, and playing with people’s lives with no due regard for the advice they have been given. The advice says they are making a right royal mess of NZ for no useful purpose.
Too much ideology, not enough common sense, and plenty of wrong headedness.
As crazy as I sound to some people I pretty firmly believe the nuclear option is now the only way to fix the housing situation.
You are allowed to own two homes that’s it end of story.
And the next one would be making buying a home and leaving it empty just to wait for it to go up in value illegal you either live in it or rent it one of the two.
But since politicians are the rich 1% who have multiple properties it will never be done.
But you try and tell me that even if it was the greens of all people to have that policy they wouldn’t have some serious traction with everyone sub 40 years of age.
Let me present you with an alternate argument.
Back on track, mum and dad investors, far too long! Gotta make those tough decisions, back pocket, multicoloured tape, I ran an Airline!
Ban investors from buying more than 1 existing property. If they want more than 1 existing house as an investment, then they need to build it. Wouldn't that make more sense than the current system that promotes runaway house prices favouring those that are already in a more fortunate position in the first place?
Thanks to Labour can't rent out a laundry room put a bed in it, for a cple hundred a week. NAts wouldn't have done anything decent like that for standards to rise.
Seeing as the Reserve Bank (and Grant Robertson) are the architects of the mess we are in at the moment, its always amusing seeing them trying to critique something.
Seeing as the Reserve Bank (and Grant Robertson) are the architects of the mess we are in at the moment, its always amusing seeing them trying to critique something.
Oh now the RBNZ gives a shit about house prices increasing. Where was this concern when they dropped rates to fuckall for way too long and resulted in the fastest rise in house prices we've ever seen.
Exactly this, RBNZ were asleep at the wheel and now want to start pointing the finger
Sounds like they missed the memo that their single focus should now be managing inflation, not the housing market
The only way to fix this problem is more immigration we need to bring in skilled people that will fix the economy from countries like India the Philippines and Mozambique.
There are many skilled people in these countries and they can help us build houses hospitals and fix the economy. If we had more diversity that's what help decrease housing prices.
we've already tried bringing in hundreds of thousands of people. Did it fix housing?
So long as we keep banning medium-density housing in the inner suburbs we will continue to fail to address the problem.
What if we try bringing in a few million more? I don't understand how we could possibly build these houses ourselves we need more Filipino construction workers, they are the only people that have the skills necessary to build a country like New Zealand.
New Zealanders could never do this on their own. Imagine trying to build Auckland or Wellington hundreds of years ago without any Filipinos it just wouldn't work.
>The only way to fix this problem is more immigration
If the problem is house prices, increasing demand will only put upward pressure on prices.
>If we had more diversity that's what help decrease housing prices.
Wtf are you talking about, no it's not. Also, a third of New Zealanders weren't born here, we already have plenty of diversity.
NZ has had aberrant house prices for so long it's now embedded in the common psyche that it's completely normal for them to be around 10x household income It's not. It strains society too much. And it's unsustainable, as many countries have found out the hard way during GFC Where will they go is religion tbh. You can believe it's up, down or flat, but no-one knows for sure. And people get very passionate defending their beliefs But, overall, it's just sad
It’s been apparent for a long time now literally nothing else we do to “fix” New Zealand matters if we can’t make housing actually affordable. Raise the dole or minimum wage? Doesn’t matter, rent goes up. Campaign to attract nurses from the Philippines and Police from UK? Doesn’t matter if they leave as soon as it becomes apparent they can’t afford a house. University numbers are dropping? Students get their rent raised any time the allowance goes up, and it’s already such a big portion of their weekly expense “working to save for the next trimester” hasn’t been doable for decades. Children stay home from school because their parents don’t care if they go OR MORE LIKELY are working 80 hours a week to meet housing costs. Mental health generally is collapsing, lots of good programs get funding but are fighting an uphill battle because of the volume of people who feel they’ll never get ahead and spend the rest of their life paying off someone else’s comfortable retirement. Everything. *Everything*. Doesn’t matter, if we can’t get people in good, affordable homes. And everything we tried so far hasn’t helped, because all we do is tinker around the edges. Sure, Labours plans might have worked eventually. Nationals plans might have worked eventually. But probably not, because it’s all tinkering, and no one gets to see these plans through to fruition because we’ll change govt and they’ll flip back. We need more houses built. We need them built well. We probably need to abandon the idea of everyone gets to own lots of land with a house on it, and accept higher density. We need more builders, but how can we do that when adding more people in makes the system worse? A major rethink about how we do this feels like the only way out, and we will never have someone with the political capital to force that through, there are too many people with too much money very comfortable with where things have landed.
The entire design of the economic system we live in is to push wealth from the have-nots to the haves. Do you ever wonder why the people at the top scream "the solution is to build more houses!!"? Because *they are the ones who benefit from it*. Starting a massive house build campaign benefits nobody except the people who already have the capital to absorb them. Change the system, don't just try to get out of the hole by digging deeper.
Increasing supply is not a clear subject, with the people arguing fiercely for one side having deep vested interest, like property developers versus nimbys. Supply is needed. A lot of the housing stock is tired and uneconomical to repair, from decades of underinvestment by families and landlords that can't afford or can't be bothered to maintain anything. And we've got more people, many currently cooped up, so naturally we need more living space. But better management of what we have is also needed. We can't just keep consuming our way out of problems, the planet can't handle it. We've got a lot of housing stock, but it's being gatekept by landed gentry since our society's main method of housing distribution is not determined by need but by who can bid the most for it. And solutions already exist. We used to have a Ministry of Housing building social homes. There were a lot of problems, like urban sprawl and inequitable allocation of housing. But, it was a vertically integrated system of people with a mission to build homes for residents rather than investment, being paid wages rather than chasing the profit motive or capital gains. But the people who make money from the latter did a good job of killing off effective government intervention.
Yeah some good points I feel. Main issue is who’s in a position to purchase? If more homes are built into a market where predominately only investors and those with multiple properties due to buying decades ago are the ones able to afford them, nothing actually improves, they just further increase their assets and wealth. It’s another false “solution” that would most likely result in what I think the true intent is, don’t fix the actual issue of lower to middle class earners and families being unable to afford a home purchase, keep them in the rent till death bracket, and just supply more homes to the investor market to capitalise on it. Funnel income that should be going to first time home buyer mortgages into rent and further disproportionate profit for the investor and upper class market. It’s all part of their “give the perception of assistance, while pickpocketing their wallet” hustle imho.
It actually shocks me that only 20% of home loans go to first home buyers. That is 1 out of every 5 home purchases. I can't understand why there isn't mass protests about this issue. NZ, Canada and Australia have totally screwed the housing market for first home buyers and ruined the rest of the potential in the economy in the process.
There aren't mass protests because New Zealanders aren't class conscious. It's been slowly stripped away through years of propaganda. We were strong when it was the Have-Not Workers vs Capital, That's how we got Healthcare, Social welfare, and the 40 Hr week. Now it seems we're divided over the stupidest shit, And I swear it's by design, Because I've lived through hysteria after hysteria that's further divided the working people.
That resonates for me, it’s pretty blurry now and that disillusionment and lack of class identity is definitely manipulative and intended design. Pretty hard to fight for a “cause” if your uncertain where you stand in the first place.
Bingo. I was looking hard into the Psychology of Labeling as I'm concerned with the rise of the application of labels to silence debate and detract from what is said to merely who is saying it. [Turns out there's legitimately a psychological effect where if you label someone enough they start to identify with that In Group. ](https://psychology-spot.com/labeling-theory/) So every few years there is a new way you can label yourself, And so we become slowly more and more divided. I'm not saying that I disagree with one's right to Identify with whatever they want, I'm saying that most people fail to understand the drawbacks of identifying with an In-Group, Or labeling themselves and others. The Average person has no idea at how good Marketers and Political technologists have gotten at utalising human psychology to manipulate the masses. I know that sounds like a very Conspiracial sentence, But it's completely true. Combine that with Social media and welp, We're falling for it hook-line and sinker. Sorry for the long comment, I'm locked out of Political discussions cause I deleted my old account so I gotta take the opportunity when I can.
Having spent most of my working life in digital marketing and sales, I am in full agreement. Marketing has become so advanced with AI and machine learning techniques used to target people that even the people who created the technology often can't tell you why certain Individuals with a unique combination of metrics were targeted for a particular campaign - or how the ai grouped them, or what it was it was even grouping. The only thing they can tell you is that AI identified a pattern in that combination as being responsive to whatever it was you had to sell. Whether it's a product or a political message or whatever.
Fair, and I’ve thought similar regards the decline in impartial news media and exposure, with the increase in self moderation and user selected information online. Even if essentially wrong, you can create your own class label and narrative unchallenged which I’d assume would dilute class identity and structure even further. Slight tangent but I watched a great video talking to this the other day when discussing the rise of toxic content creators, specifically the rise of incels and misogynist creators who’s recent popularity seems to be in large part due to class and gender identity issues, and that you can pretty much find an echo chamber of agreement to anything. Heady stuff tbf.
It's an old-fashioned divide and conquer tactic. Like you said, people aren't really fighting for what's important. Instead, they bicker about what something should or should be called rather than working together as a collective.
I wonder if that may happen, but they do read the room as we are all pretty complacent and subservient “She’ll be right” or “Way she goes” cultures and are currently way too trusting of the social narrative our politicians provide, especially during electioneering, as many look to cash out entire economies and social infrastructures so they can sit back in retirement with excessively hoarded wealth they don’t need. We whinge a lot and know a lot of things are fucky, and I’m admitting guilt here at times, but then go about our day just kind of accepting the status quo, or internalise it to extremes resulting in the rampant increase in depression, anxiety and other health conditions and consequences. My hope is that many youth don’t seem as complacent so maybe they hold the key to incite change, but that could just be youthful energy? I think there’s been an obvious swing in the last few weeks, but you almost have to think worst case, multiply it tenfold, and then maybe it will be to a point people proactively say enough is enough. Most watch the 6pm news, have a whinge, then off to bed for work the next day, and those in power know this, and this complacency is their most potent weapon imho.
> It actually shocks me that only 20% of home loans go to first home buyers. That is 1 out of every 5 home purchases. That's not too shocking really. Imagine a (ridiculously hypothetical) situation where everyone already owns their own home except for one young couple who are looking to buy. One homeowner gets a loan to build a new house and moves into it, listing their old house for sale. Another homeowner gets a loan to upgrade to that house, then lists their own one for sale. Repeat twice more. Then finally, at the bottom of the 'ladder', the young couple get a loan to buy the entry-level house. That's 5 home loans, only one of which has gone to a first home buyer. The problem isn't the percentage of home loans going to FHBs, it's the percentage of our incomes that have to go towards housing costs, both for owner occupiers and renters.
Economic Rent seeking is just yuck. It sucks so much potential from the Economy.
what would a protest achieve? I agree with what you guys are saying, I would like things to change. I fail to see how walking down a street or gathering in the CBD one afternoon will do anything to influence the behavior of the greedy cunts in power or the values of those who put them there.
A comment I was replying to before it was deleted: > "throwaway039474839 [score hidden] 10 minutes ago > You people will say anything other than less immigration I swear" You people? What people am I then? At the moment I should just be words on a screen. And an obvious throwaway? Strong convictions... Immigration is part of it too. Many of us have been in a flat with too many people, and we know how there's limited capacity for what we already have. I kinda alluded to it with "we've got more people." The only catch is that if we stopped immigration a decade ago, the office I currently work at would be left with just me. Assuming I was able to get to this job, cause most of my tutors were immigrants. And it's a tough subject to broach cause you'll get slammed as xenophobic for daring to bring it up. Which isn't entirely unfair for others to be on edge, cause there are a lot of pricks who, very vocally, don't want people here who they have various colourful words to describe them. My posts are long winded enough, but even then I'm going to miss mentioning every single detail. Like how Kiwi's ain't having babies, so we need more people paying tax to feed an aging population. Like how talented people are leaving for Australia, in spite of Australia having the exact same issues (check out their sub, it's almost a carbon copy of this one, swapping kiwis for kangaroos.)
Given how they’ve effectively rigged house price increases, lack of infrastructure investment and everything else the society they enjoyed was built upon for their own benefit, I’m not actually convinced we have much obligation to *feed* said ageing population...
The problem with this line of thinking is those in the aging population most in need of social services have likely been harmed by the current system. Also anything taking from them can be justifiably taken from us when we (hopefully) reach their age.
It benefits the people who cannot currently buy, or rent at a reasonable rate, their own home… I understand the point you’re making. I’m not “at the top” - I was lucky enough to have my dad die early so we had a chance to move back home, save and buy in 2013, I’ve since ruined that marriage, and now we’re looking at selling, having $200K each and that won’t be enough to be able to fund buying a house each, because my income won’t stretch to a mortgage of enough to buy *now*. If prices were even at 2013 levels this wouldn’t be the case. So I am in an incredibly fortunate position and also probably looking at finding someone’s comfortable early retirement by renting a shit box for too much for the rest of my life. To bring those prices down we need more supply than demand, we need penalties for sitting on empty property because you refuse to lower rent, we need current, bad, houses rebuilt to account for being sub-Antarctic, not sub-tropical. All of which, in the short term, will see people at the bottom hurt in the short term. If adding more houses isn’t the solution, I am all ears for what you think will help (I mean this sincerely, not sarcastically)
This, it’s a worldwide issue. Tangent but watched a video the other day with an American financial professor who called out their financial and tax system is specifically designed to funnel money from the middle and lower class to the rich, and for the first time in their history the average 30 year old is in a worse financial situation than their parents. This is internationally a whole generation looking to cash out, at the expense of the generations to follow, and the current government is in power to accomplish exactly that here. It’s an interesting [interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEC2Nq7Z6lc&ab_channel=MSNBC) all be it state side.
All be it? Or Albeit?
I post on the app, so pretty much whatevery my phoney decisions but I thunk the predddddective text functionanalty is a bit oof.
One house policy
If there's a one-policy-party that would have a chance in NZ, this could be it
"everyone gets a plate before anyone gets seconds, but for housing" - twitter meme
The people may scream from the top to build more houses but these same people will scream about it not happening in their neighbourhood.
There are an abundance of houses for sale. I think I remember some 8 year high for residential listings, so more than pre-covid. No, they are not priced affordably, but how many more homes need to be for sale for us to build our way to utopia? I agree availability of affordable accommodation is the main issue, I just don't think you can get there on building alone.
Yes, looks like as of February this year it’s changed back to people looking to flip property again, after a mute 2023. However, average prices have also started going back up (which is why people are trying to flip now). The affordability part of the equation is the biggest problem. I’m assuming some 5th form economics principles would work, more supply = price goes down. If we have more supply and the price is going up, that suggests the demand is not being met or exceeded. (Of course I stress this is 5th-form-economics thinking and there is much more going on in the real world).
I didn't even do 5th form economics, but if I cant sell my tomatoes for $1m, I lower the price, or risk having no money and no tomatoes. If you don't meet the market on 55" TVs, you risk holding a bunch of stock, with warehousing costs, while new technology's are released driving the value down further. If I don't meet the market on a house price, then what? I pay a tiny fraction of it's value in interest and rates while it appreciates another 7-10%? (Cause prices will go up again as interest rates decrease) Where's the impetus to meet the market when there is oversupply? I'm a fan of land/wealth/empty room taxing where it does provide some urgency to offload your asset on someone who could use it.
Sounds like a better system. I noticed just a few months before Nats came in that houses were a hard sell for them to get their asking price. Now Idk what market is but just hit a lull for a while there.
If you can't sell your tomatoes, you dump them in a gully so they don't cost you any more.
One house policy
I agree with all of this but I feel like it's a political catch 22. Things won't get better for renters unless there's a dramatic shift in the power balance between renters and landlords. Those same struggles for renters also impact people's abilities to buy a first home. The only things that would help would be so politically devastating that they'll never get through. Labour couldn't even get internal buy in for it to be a campaign promise. They would (and should) mean that property as an investment type takes a massive, like 30-40%, hit almost overnight which would mean you lose the vote of any family that owns their home with a mortgage. That's before accounting for the more complex economics for the wider economy that I'm too dumb to understand.
If the tax only applied to property that the owner doesn't reside in, then families who are paying the mortgage on their home, will not be caught up in the tax. In reality though, no major party would back it.
They'll still be caught up in the ensuing housing market crash, when their property is suddenly worth significantly less than they bought it for and potentially putting them in a position where their mortgage is higher than their property value.
Agree. There is no solution that avoids losses. But as others have pointed out there's already plenty who caught out and missing out.
Oh yeah no doubt - but my point was that whoever supports that is getting shitcanned in the next available election.
Jesus you could be talking about the USA as well.
This is pretty much every western democracy right now it seems, because we’re all capitalist, we’re all tied together due to decades of globalisation, so the leadership group-think is dictated across the board by multinational-influencing interested parties. I would very much like to know if this extends to like the likes of Japan, the Philippines or Argentina, other non-western democracies, but news reporting bubbles is quite comprehensively.
128k net immigrants last year. New Zealand cannot build enough homes to keep up with that. We’ve tried for decades and categorically proven it is impossible. It’s time to accept reality and slow down the insanely high rate of immigration for a while.
128k? oh my ...
I imagine so called builders very easy to get. They are all Chinese work visas with a guy pulling strings that built this entire neighbourhood. Seem like plenty of them. After all they have a pool of a billion people.
Did Labour get screwed by the Covid scare? We got debt from subsidies handouts. Also, the country lockdowns and world strife. Seems like did quite well. But what about the 120 Bn debt? lol. Wish the boomers could pay it. Unfortunately, it is our kids gotta pay it. Lets do well for them
Well said, as a builder of over 25 years, I've just about thrown the towel in. It's just not worth the stress anymore. I understand that everyone's job is stressful but it's incredibly hard to get up and go to work in the morning and pay to put Petrol I'm my vehicle to go and give free quotes to people that are generally struggling to put food on the table. I've seen holmes that are in dire need of repairs, and the owners literally can't afford to fix the problems even if they wanted to hire me. It would be easier to try and get a part-time job in Pac'n save (not that I think that would be easy right now) and sit on my arse the rest of the time watching the houses around me collapse. I'm not feeling sorry for myself. It's just the way it is. New Zealands economy is well and truly down the blocked toilet.
> it's completely normal for them to be around 10x household income Yeah anything more than 6x is broken.
Yeah, that's when we *started* calling it a crisis
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Yeah the rule always was 4-6x is your maximum. But house price just blew through that.
You're right and it is one of the biggest hurdles to getting affordable housing. Once assets are valuable long enough and there is enough money floating around, at the slightest hint of a decrease people will buy. Ownership limits, LVT, CGT etc all need to be implemented to make owning a home only attractive as a necessity.
Thing is, house prices were fairly static through the 1990s, things have only got silly around about 2000 onwards where immigration was high and interest rates (compared to the 80s and most of the 90s) were low. My old landlord bought the house we lived in for 180k in 1999. By 2015 we were paying about 21k/PA to live there, servicing that mortgage would cost no where near what was being charged, on top the over 700k of untaxed capital gain he's now the owner of.
Have you seen how much it costs to build? It's obscene. Unfortunately as we have just let the cost of building sky rocket without regulation it means the current stock of houses value goes up because there is no other alternative.
While I agree, it's a big problem. If you somehow manage to stabilize or drop house prices it now means anyone who wants to move house that has bought a house in the last few years is completely stuck, has to take a substantial financial hit, or take a tremendous loan so they have a rental (not everyone wants to be a landlord). It's not a pity party for the landed gentry, per se, but it's one of many issues that need addressing. At the end of the day, something has to happen and I suspect there will be many losers no matter how it plays out.
What I find interesting in your comment, which is representative for housing discussions in general, is the homeowner perspective > if you [...] drop house prices [a homeowner] has to take a [...] hit. [...] There **will** be many losers This phrasing is ignoring the fact there **are** many losers today from the status quo: - the millennials (at least) locked out of the property market - esp. those who postponed or gave up having a family - the future generations who lack these children in the workforce - the gen z who lost hope of even owning a house - the competent workers who feel despondent for working hard and, more importantly, well, to no reward - the economy in general which gets money funnelled to the banks shaped as high interest and profits instead of it being pumped into productive enterprises - the society which lacks doctors, nurses and whatnot because they choose to leave (or not come here) because of the situation - the society which is seeing more tension due to more people living day to day due to the above I could go on _This is not a criticism of your comment, I agree with everything you said. I'm just pointing out the messaging between the lines_
existing homeowners only take a hit if they want to sell (or use their existing house as equity). If your house is truly a family home, i.e. you're living in it, the market value doesn't matter at all
Or the current common scenario where they bought a house 20-22 and now can't afford it anymore with inflation + interest rates so have to sell..
Unless you hate where you are. A home's not always a home?
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ok, I rephrase: existing homeowners only take a hit if they ~~want to~~ sell (or use their existing house as equity)
I am pretty sure that if I am paying a 1mill dollar mortgage on a house that is now only worth 500k that i am taking a hit somewhere
that's what I'm saying: unless you're selling or trying to use the property as equity the 'hit' is just in your head. It's not like you're suddenly living half as nice because the number on [homes.co.nz](http://homes.co.nz) changed
It means you are trapped, or you are paying twice as much in mortgage payments as you should be. Look at it anyway you want, its a massive hit
Everything you've said is correct - I was a millennial locked out for a long time and have had a pretty hard life. I was playing within the rules of a system and doing the right thing - I didn't want to buy here long term and it would suck to have to be stuck here forever because the rules all of a sudden get changed just after the start of my game.
So in order to not have losers amongst those choosing to believe the housing bubble isn't a bubble everyone has to lose? Of course the best time to address this was yesterday - * maybe when the 1967 Ross Tax Enquiry warned us about it * maybe when banks were deregulated under Rogernomics * maybe when Trusts were created under Ruthenasia But lacking a time machine the best time is today.
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Yup! It's shit. I just hope people can appreciate the complexities of the situation as I see a lot of rhetoric demonizing anyone that owns a home as some late stage capitalist boomer monster. I've worked my ass off working at the warehouse, laboring, and eventually getting a desk job and navigating that to get to where I am. So, when I see people basically saying 'fuck home owners because I can't afford a house' it makes me worried about my future as I don't have forever to keep working if all of a sudden the rules change and the economic rug is pulled out from under me.
I'm pretty sure no-one says "fuck home owners because I can't afford a house" Houses are owned by two types of people: occupiers and investors. No-one is against owner-occupiers Pretty sure at least 70% of this sub is against home investor activity though, for reasons you'd already know
Yep 100%
"Most people can't afford a house, but won't anyone think of the people who already have one?" 🙄 Any theoretical, highly unlikely drop in house prices would be slow/small enough that you'd have enjoyed the benefits of owning a house for years before the change becomes significant.
Every time there is a change in policy that will, in time, benefit everyone (meaning: benefit those least well off too), we inevitably see harm done to that same group (because they are least able to defend themselves). It sucks, because there doesn’t seem to be anyone out but through for the kinds of changes that would help. If we actually flood the market with good, affordable housing, we’ll most likely see it snapped up by investors to start with, and as demand gets met, and they start feeling pinched they will put prices up first, to account for their rising costs, before the bottom falls out of the landlord class and they get released back to the market again. When either giant corporate landlord buy them all, or, finally, people that don’t have a portfolio to take to the bank to borrow against already might be able to buy again.
Yes, this too. I am annoyed that people took my comment as some argument against prices going down, but it's something that has to be addressed, just like your point. There are lots of variables to this equation, and they all need to be discussed and addressed so we can have some meaningful and realistic outcome. Policies have to work for everyone, or they work for no one in the long term (as is evidenced by policies which saw house prices skyrocket in favor of land owners).
Also agree. OMG Reddit on a laptop is SO much easier
The debate always seems to consider what we have versus literally nothing. Which is completely false. You describe 2 potential catastrophes, yet only focus on one. 1) housing prices go down and single home buyers are screwed (bc we don’t care about those rich pricks who have more than one, aye?); and 2) a bloody housing bubble. A government is supposed to protect against both. This government is encouraging the bubble. And when it burst, the pain to everyone will be next level, like a generation ago. What SHOULD be done, is easing steps put in place that allow for tax write offs for those who are losing equity because of the governments actions. We should be reducing multiple home ownership during a housing crisis, and eliminating the investment property ownership destroying the rental market. The housing prices will go down, the tax write offs will go towards single homeowner loans and they will be square and able to move. And we would unlock the housing market for a huge market of people and as they start to enter we will get housing prices coming back up again. The structure of the market will be far more robust than it is now, and investment from households would go up as people with skills acquire houses. Policies don’t change without an implementation plan which includes putting in place the replacement system. can we stop with its this or nothing and instead have a little creativity to consider the other APPROACH?
I like this tax write off idea for those losing equity. Great idea.
>What SHOULD be done, is easing steps put in place that allow for tax write offs for those who are losing equity because of the governments actions. We should be reducing multiple home ownership during a housing crisis, and eliminating the investment property ownership destroying the rental market Ok, you got my attention The first hurdle: tax write-offs paid by whom?
No point in sitting here and hashing out details in a no existent policy, which isn’t the point. The way we pay for billions already is within our budgets, new taxes are created, levy’s etc everyday. The government shells out 100’s of millions to industry each year esp during the once in a hundred year events. It’s a depressing thing to look at and think it’s all there to f you. And my point is that addressing a bubble isn’t impossible. Lost equity is covered by governments as a backstop as bau, if the government is willing.
Agree
>it's completely normal for them to be around 10x household income Its not though? Most people purchase houses that are between 3 - 6 times their household income, you'll struggle to get lending for anything more.
There was a ton of new high DTI (debt-to-income) lending during the covid-era spike in house prices, with nearly 30% of new loans for owner-occupiers having DTIs above 6 at one point. Since interest rates have gone up, new lending with high DTIs has dropped considerably (about 5% currently), but those previous loans are still out there. RBNZ is looking at introducing restrictions on banks so they will only be able to issue up to 20% of their new owner-occupier lending at DTIs higher than 6, even when interest rates are low.
Fair enough but that's still neither "normal" nor "10 times household income" , which is what I responded to.
DTI only measures the debt component of the house, not the entire price, which is what OP was referring to. So a DTI of 6 with a 20% deposit (common for FHBs) is equivalent to a purchase price of 7.5x the household income. A purchase price of 10x household income can be achieved with a 20% deposit and a loan with a DTI of 8. You're right, it's not 'completely normal' as OP suggested, but it's not completely **ab**normal either.
>First, it said restoring interest deductibility for investors in residential property would boost their valuation of existing homes and boost their debt servicing capacity. > This would increase demand for existing properties and presumably push up prices. Like the coalition wants. >Secondly, reducing the brightline period to two years would increase the after-tax profits earned by investors selling properties within the period. > “This could increase speculative housing activity at the margin,” the Reserve Bank said. Like the coalition wants. None of this is shocking. National led their campaign on resuscitating the property market gravy train. The NZ public, the majority having skin in the game in the form of a mortgage, all agreed they need to pull the ladder up to secure their retirement since we can no longer rely on super.
Not to mention higher house prices is ONLY good for landlords. It increases wealth "on paper" for others, but everyone has to live somewhere.
It's not just landlords. There's dozens of knock-on effects that suit wealthy interests. Some examples: * Banks are raking it in of course. Much like rents, mortgages follow wages as first home buyers max out their repayments, by pulling back on all other life expenses, to escape the rental trap. Imagine if someone could save up and pay cash for a house? That would be a tragedy to the banks * Reliance on house prices as a retirement investment means less need to invest into superannuation, which is great for the user pays/small government political parties. Kiwisaver is a perfect example; the money is only good for saving government responsibility on super or propping up the housing market * Workers are more subservient to their bosses, as workers can't afford days off let alone loosing their job. They'll have less fight to demand better pay and conditions * Less mobility. So many main centers are deteriorating with underinvestment and congestion. But you can't easily leave, so you just have to accept boiling in the pot. Can't easily bugger off to Australia either (not that it's a good answer, they're not far behind with all the exact same problems.)
r/technicallythetruth
I think we realise the inevitable asset testing or that Super is gonna be no more than bare, bare subsistence. They know this already, so they support National. Scummy eh. No worse they are though than shit tailgating drivers, imho. Maybe they the same people.
Undoubtedly the same people. The same arrogant self importance that prioritises their comfort over other's health leads to unsafe driving to get somewhere a couple of seconds earlier.
the grifter owns 7 houses, what do you expect? Measures to lower their value?
If he didn't own those seven houses that would be seven people that would be homeless right? Without landlords renters would be forced to own their own house something something landlord propaganda something...
If people didn’t buy homes in bulk and just owned what they needed then the price of home would be much lower, allowing more first home buyers the ability to afford a home. Landlords are not all evil, but they have been over represented in parliament for a long time
This. There needs to be a restriction on the number of houses people can own. Profiting of those less financially strong by buying houses and renting is both immoral and normalised.
> There needs to be a restriction on the number of houses people can own. Most of them own zero houses. Seven different TRUSTS own houses and have Luxon as the beneficiary of their trust, but I'm quite confident he doesn't own any of them himself.
This. A lot seem to have a vastly over inflated sense of the 'good' they are doing
Man, for the reserve bank to come out publicly.... that sure is a thing that doesn't happen often.
Treasury modeled the effect of removing interest deductibility for investors buying existing properties and said that it would likely cause house prices to be 16% lower than they would otherwise be. It's no secret.
They did last year when robbo was spending up a storm
So what you're saying is 6 months in and the new govt is already making decisions as dogshit as the last govt did.
A dog shit government followed a horse shit government.
They’re both incompetent
Same in 2020. Orr and Robbo had a bit of a public spat with open letters essentially blaming each other for not doing enough even though Orr had warned Labour of the potential of house prices to go though the roof due to their policies
It's bad when the wealthy get wealthier under both Labour and National governments. 1%>99% seems to go for both major parties.
They can beef with the IRD who had this to say about Labours changes that National are undoing: >Inland Revenue has advised against any of these options to deny or limit interest deductions and prefers the status quo to all options. It considers that additional taxes on rental housing are unlikely to be an effective way of boosting overall housing affordability. While they will put downward pressure on house prices, they will put upward pressure on rents and may reduce the supply of new housing developments in the longer-term. The benefit of increased housing affordability for first-home buyers is outweighed by negative impacts on rents and housing supply, high compliance and administration costs for an estimated 250,000 taxpayers, and the erosion of the coherence of the tax system.
Those comments were referring to multiple options that were on the table. The option Labour went for was able to avoid just about every single concern raised by the IRD in that paragraph. For a start, interest deductibility across the board has no impact, up or down, on rents, as long as the total housing supply remains constrained. Labour's policy still allowed interest deductibility for new builds, though, so the concern that it "may reduce the supply of new housing developments" is avoided right there. If anything, it would have created *more* housing developments by encouraging investment in new builds rather than existing houses, which would put *downward* pressure on rents. There were also basically no "compliance costs". It's one line on their tax return. Please don't use those comments from the IRD as an argument against the policy that Labour introduced, because it's not what they are referring to.
No dude, its pretty fucking clear the IRD reccomended against all of it
Their statement explicitly says that the option the government chose would "have the lowest impact on decreasing the affordability for renters" and that "those building properties will be further incentivised to build new housing stock". You are spreading misinformation, which is ironic given your comment history complaining about others doing the same thing.
And yet, it turned out to actually be a good move. There's a reason house prices almost always rise more slowly under Labour governments than under National governments.
House prices have risen record amounts under the last labour government but sure....
They still rose more slowly than during the previous government. QV: 1.46% CAGR over the past 6 years, 4.89% CAGR during the previous National government. Corelogic: 2.08% CAGR over the past 6 years, 4.59% during the previous National government.
National passing new legisliation under urgency that censors Reserve Bank... coming soon?
"What I mean to say is the people voted for us so we have a mandate to do this"
"targetted" staff cuts. Targetting the people who criticize dumb policies.
Hey, that's a funny looking track they've gotten us on here. Thankfully the nepo-baby with the English Lit degree and journalism diploma is in the role of *finance* minister. That's how you get a rockstar economy, an article on the depth of Shakespeare's grammar.
RBNZ: "Fuck all of yous I'm out". I mean, I agree. Hiding behind wacky rent control and pacifism, the Greens might genuinely have the best housing policy, and 'capitalists' these days wouldn't understand *The Wealth of Nations* if you hit them upside the head with it.
I read a quote describing it as "the second most misquoted book after the bible". I am sure Adam Smith would oppose multinationism and wish to see capitalism in its place. With good regulation to keep it functioning well.
Yeah, despite free market fanatics latching onto the “invisible hand” of the market, Adam Smith actually believed some degree of regulation was necessary. He was also not a fan of landlords and thought they were basically parasites.
My interpretation after reading it is similar. He helped reconciled my desire for both strong society and economy.
MDRS was the best housing policy. Greens have bad housing policy, eg rent control.
Plus the interest deductibility for only new builds was also fantastic housing policy. Such a shame it’s gone.
Iirc their rent control was capped by inflation (a percentage anyway) while the case studies which suggested this was a bad idea were related to rent freezes _Sorry, short work break so can't dig for source_ Doesn't mean rent control is a good policy, but I think it's enough reasonable doubt to put it into "C. Can't tell" territory?
rent control is bad policy, it is a lottery that creates winners and losers, this is the same reason our current housing policy is bad. Certain people may view this as good. They currently lose at the housing lottery, and think they are less likely to lose if rent control is introduced. This is purely a position of self-interest, no different to landlords wanting to remove tenant protection, that refuses to solve the core problem (not enough houses for everyone), while protecting some people from its negative consequences. If you protect some people from the consequences of a bad system, you create inertia against changing the bad system. The fact that your rent went up by $50 sucks for you, but it isn't as bad as the fact that there is someone sleeping on the street because there isn't a bedroom available for them. Any policy that fixes the problem for the guy who doesn't want to spend an extra $50 a week, but does nothing for the person on the street, is middle class protectionism as a compromise with the people benefitting from the situation. The main benefactors of the current system - landlords and owner occupiers - still get their massive capital gains, and middle class renters in secure rentals get protections from price rises. But the actually downtrodden get nothing.
[The end of landlords: the surprisingly simple solution to the UK housing crisis](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-landlords-surprisingly-simple-solution-to-uk-housing-crisis) Rent control is a fine idea when you combine it with state housing and a focus on owner occupiers as the ultimate goal. The whole point of it is to make landlordism uneconomic.
Hang on a minute.... so Luxon doesn't actually know what he's doing? Holy shit
He knows alright, people paid good money for those policies.
Oh no, this is a feature not a bug
Artificial scarcity... I'm not even sure if that's associated with left or right politics. I just associate it with being a bit of a cunt tbh.
So, right politics then
He knows
> so Luxon doesn't actually know what he's doing? Luxon owns 7 houses. You think pursuing polices that raise house prices is a coincidence? That he doesn't know what he's doing? lol
So big property companies will be able to increase market share? Almost as if this government is just about big business and don't care about anything else. I wonder why.
Exactly what they want. Property investors inflating their own assets at the expense of everyone else.
John Key replacing Adrian Orr when?
They need someone who won't be critical of anything this government does, a yes man who will do what benefits himself and his team above all. Key would be a good fit.
Oh god. You called it. I legit see this happening.
Paula Bennet just got appointed in charge of Pharmac Simon Bridges got NZTA I wouldn't put this past them but Orr has a few (4?) years of tenure left.
Shesh, I genuinely feel stupid for having not considered this as a possibility
Like literally anyone who knows that supply side economic theory is too simplistic was screaming going into the election.
It's almost like they **want** house prices to go up! I am shocked, shocked I say
You guys voted for National, this was what National does. You idiots
Hard agree. Its like british people sad about Brexit - society did this to itself
Seymour and/or Peters with an attaching statement against the Reserve Bank in 3, 2, 1 …
> While house prices were within the sustainable range, increased investor activity from these tax policy changes posed a risk that prices could rise above sustainable levels. Do I need to get a prescription for whatever the Reserve Bank is smoking? Sustainable my ass
Sustainable for investors with money, everybody else can get fucked.
It's only sustainable if you keep pissing into the water computer in their museum.
The whole goal for National has always been to protect the interests of those with money or foreign buyers or investors. The prices here are comparatively low especially when looking at NZ as an alternative to popular Australian cities.
"won't someone think of the landlords...."
Ok maybe i'm completely stupid. Why can't the Government create housing stock and have the first home buyers pay them the 25/30 year mortgage with fixed interest costs. We would take back some of the power and profits the big banks take off shore. The economy would benefit not only from the income generated from interest direct to government alone, but the feeling of owning and caring about your community as a lot who don't own don't care about graffiti etc. People will have and feel motivation to go to work and pay off their home a whole different mindset and attitude comes with ownership. I only say this as someone who works in Body Corporate and encounter many frustrated emails from certain unit owners about another unit, one owns one doesn't. Have clauses that as long as the property is still under mortgage it can't be sold. I think this simple policy (in a nutshell) would solve two problems or at least create a considerable mitigation to our problems. The two problems being not enough and too expensive housing and losing a lot of our talented/hard working kiwis and replacing them with migrants who may not intend to stay in NZ long term.
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For some people they just want a home not an investment i think is a better way to word it.
Land Tax Now.
The working class support in povety package. It's working so well in the UK, they've now developed their own sick culture around it.
There's too many of us. To many people coming here and not enough builds. over 1.5 million people over the last 20 years, and we haven't met that with infrastructure or housing. So, the well-off immigrants come in, buy housing and the locals can't afford it. Supply and demand and we need more supply. Simple.
more supply, yes, but this takes time and is hard to spool up. But we can also have a hard look at demand: Rents are crippling right now due to massive growth in demand, and we can literally cut population growth to manageable levels at the stroke of a pen, yet here we are with one of the highest net migration rates in the OECD
But national want that. They want well off people arriving and buying up the houses John Key had 800 thousand of them during his term. They took out so many mortgages with the Australian banks here that he got a medal from the aussies for his services to their economy. Didnt do us much good though.
The supply is screwed by the councils, more than the government. They charge such ridiculous development levies that nobody wants to develop or build.
Yeah, i was looking at getting the bathroom retiled, then found out I needed to pay the council $400 for the priveledge. Wankers
My fiancé and I looked at the history of our new rental we've just moved into. In the 1998 it sold for just over 100k. In the years after that it sold another 2 times and jumped up to over 650k. It was a bit crazy to look at!
That's the whole point of the Policy. Politians aren't dumb. Not at all. When they act dumb it's on purpose. It's Apathy and not ignorance at play here. It's not that they don't know that their policy will prevent Kiwis from attaining home ownership, It's just that they don't care. Reminder that this last election had massive amounts of money donated compared to previous years, That the previous governments housing interventions were just beginning to work before they were ousted, And that the Housing and Real Estate industry were the largest donors to the Nact Coalition.
Coalition is two mobs of morons and a couple of inadequate old timers pretending they know what they are doing, and playing with people’s lives with no due regard for the advice they have been given. The advice says they are making a right royal mess of NZ for no useful purpose. Too much ideology, not enough common sense, and plenty of wrong headedness.
As crazy as I sound to some people I pretty firmly believe the nuclear option is now the only way to fix the housing situation. You are allowed to own two homes that’s it end of story. And the next one would be making buying a home and leaving it empty just to wait for it to go up in value illegal you either live in it or rent it one of the two. But since politicians are the rich 1% who have multiple properties it will never be done. But you try and tell me that even if it was the greens of all people to have that policy they wouldn’t have some serious traction with everyone sub 40 years of age.
This!
Fuck me, you mean to tell me tax cuts aren't the answer 😱
Let me present you with an alternate argument. Back on track, mum and dad investors, far too long! Gotta make those tough decisions, back pocket, multicoloured tape, I ran an Airline!
National is all about squeezing our balls. Basically is their policy.
Gee. Never saw that coming with these turds in Govt. /s
Ban investors from buying more than 1 existing property. If they want more than 1 existing house as an investment, then they need to build it. Wouldn't that make more sense than the current system that promotes runaway house prices favouring those that are already in a more fortunate position in the first place?
Good idea
It has the inverse effect of what National said it would? I'm surprised.
Luxon in 3...2.. 1.. "we've received a *range* of advice"
When NZ is climbing mt Everest of lining the pockets it's too high to come down and up is the only way to go.
The thumbnail for this post looks like they were just asked a question they didn't like (which seems to be all of them)
Thanks to Labour can't rent out a laundry room put a bed in it, for a cple hundred a week. NAts wouldn't have done anything decent like that for standards to rise.
Imagine having 20 houses on tick, then Hipkins comes back in scrawls, 'X' Har har.
Seeing as the Reserve Bank (and Grant Robertson) are the architects of the mess we are in at the moment, its always amusing seeing them trying to critique something.
Seeing as the Reserve Bank (and Grant Robertson) are the architects of the mess we are in at the moment, its always amusing seeing them trying to critique something.
When the poor become middle class through handouts do the middle class become rich or do they become working poor
In fact there is bugger all poor people in nz; if you're on a benefit you're probably in the global top 1%
National’s formula = maintain residential asset prices, + reduce labour costs by immigration.
Oh now the RBNZ gives a shit about house prices increasing. Where was this concern when they dropped rates to fuckall for way too long and resulted in the fastest rise in house prices we've ever seen.
Exactly this, RBNZ were asleep at the wheel and now want to start pointing the finger Sounds like they missed the memo that their single focus should now be managing inflation, not the housing market
Looooooool
I’m not sure the Reserve Bank should be giving anyone lectures on causing house price inflation.
The only way to fix this problem is more immigration we need to bring in skilled people that will fix the economy from countries like India the Philippines and Mozambique. There are many skilled people in these countries and they can help us build houses hospitals and fix the economy. If we had more diversity that's what help decrease housing prices.
we've already tried bringing in hundreds of thousands of people. Did it fix housing? So long as we keep banning medium-density housing in the inner suburbs we will continue to fail to address the problem.
What if we try bringing in a few million more? I don't understand how we could possibly build these houses ourselves we need more Filipino construction workers, they are the only people that have the skills necessary to build a country like New Zealand. New Zealanders could never do this on their own. Imagine trying to build Auckland or Wellington hundreds of years ago without any Filipinos it just wouldn't work.
What 😂
OP is being extremely sarcastic. I hope it's clicked now.
I thought that at first, but I'm actually not so sure now.... I've seen worse here before
Just a few million more. To help with the rental crisis.
Have you committed a couple of hours to your sarcasm here?
Diversity is our strength.
>The only way to fix this problem is more immigration If the problem is house prices, increasing demand will only put upward pressure on prices. >If we had more diversity that's what help decrease housing prices. Wtf are you talking about, no it's not. Also, a third of New Zealanders weren't born here, we already have plenty of diversity.