New Zealand’s housing market isn’t functioning as well as it should be, with higher house prices, rising rents, falling home ownership, and a lack of housing options. But just how large is the housing shortage that we continually hear about?
Author: Gareth Kiernan
Media Release: Potent cocktail giving NZ a growth hangover
The global economic slowdown will continue to be a drag on New Zealand’s economy over the next year, according to Infometrics’ latest forecasts. Escalating tariffs as a result of the trade war between the US and China have seen global growth expectations steadily downgraded. China, New Zealand’s largest export market and the major engine of the global economy over the last decade, is growing at its slowest rate in 30 years. All these factors mean that next year the world economy could record its slowest growth since 2012.
Chart of the month: Will NZ housing follow in Japan’s footsteps?
Between September 1977 and March 1991, Japanese house prices rose 83% in real terms, or at an average real rate of 4.6%pa. Then things got ugly…
Is buying a house our only path to financial security?
Retirees who own their own home are generally able to live with more financial comfort than those who are renting. It’s not rocket science – if you’ve paid off your mortgage while working, then your accommodation costs in retirement are close to zero, apart from a bit of necessary spending on rates, insurance, and maintenance. Over time, renters tend to become even more disadvantaged because rents often rise faster than incomes.
Nothing in the KiwiBuild reset to stop the housing crisis
The long-awaited reset of KiwiBuild confirms that the government still doesn’t grasp why the policy went so spectacularly wrong. When KiwiBuild was conceived back in 2012, it was easy to blame the unaffordability of housing on a lack of supply – new dwelling consents the previous year had plunged to a 58-year low of 13,236. But with consents now at a 45-year high of 35,472, it no longer makes sense to suggest that high house prices are due to a lack of construction activity. KiwiBuild remains a policy that has been formulated to treat the symptoms of a problem that the government has failed to properly diagnose or understand.
Media Release: Households could be the next economic domino to fall
Households could go into their shells over the next year as economic conditions worsen, with little to support spending growth in the near-term, according to Infometrics’ latest economic forecasts. The stagnating labour market and the potential for house prices to fall both threaten to drag consumer confidence further below its long-term average.
Finding workers to build Dunedin’s hospital
Dunedin is finally getting new hospital, much to the relief of locals! Current estimates put the cost of the new hospital at $1.4bn, with construction scheduled to take place over a six-year period from August 2020 to mid-2026. It will be the largest project in the area in living memory and will require different approaches to get the right mix of workers. In this article we draw on our construction sector and local labour market to examine the opportunities and challenges in store for Dunedin.
Giving up on KiwiBuild, but housing’s affordability crisis remains
Fixing New Zealand’s housing affordability crisis was one of Labour’s key policy goals going into the last two elections. But KiwiBuild has been conspicuously absent from the government’s vocabulary in recent months, and yesterday’s Budget was no different. The government might not have given up trying to improve housing affordability, but it seems to have realised that KiwiBuild is not the answer to the problem.
Forecast Media Release: April 2019
Despite increasing storm clouds and general concern about the New Zealand economy’s prospects, Infometrics’ latest economic forecasts show GDP growth holding up well throughout the next year. The economic consultancy predicts 3.1% growth in the year to June 2020. A recent resurgence in residential building consents, particularly in Auckland, is pivotal to that outcome.
Global trends add weight to NZ economy’s slowdown
New Zealand is at the mercy of international economic trends more than at any time since 2011, according to Infometrics’ latest economic forecasts. On the domestic front, net migration is slowing, the housing market has softened, and the tight labour market means that capacity pressures are inhibiting further growth.