Hon Judith Collins
National Party Spokesperson for Urban Development

8 June 2018

Twyford’s numbers badly wrong on foreign buyers

Housing Minister Phil Twyford failed to defend his numbers this morning on foreign home buyers in New Zealand because he got them badly wrong, says National’s Housing spokesperson Judith Collins.

“When challenged on the AM Show today and faced with official statistics, Phil Twyford failed to defend his previous stance that foreigners – particularly Chinese – dominated New Zealand’s property market,” Mrs Collins says.

“He originally claimed that 30 per cent of homes in New Zealand were being sold to foreigners. In the face of irrefutable evidence – he could not defend those numbers.

“Official statistics released yesterday show foreign house buyers make up just three per cent of New Zealand’s residential property market, exactly what the previous National Government maintained.

“In the lead up to the election Labour and Phil Twyford ran a scare campaign claiming buyers with ‘Chinese sounding names’ were not real New Zealanders deserving of a home and were responsible for ‘pricing first-home buyers out of the market’.

“Phil Twyford is so wrong with this crusade that now foreign investors and developers are unable to build in New Zealand because of the uncertainty in the market and are taking their millions of dollars and the new houses and apartments that they would have built overseas.

“Statistics NZ, who have published these numbers for the first time, also state the 3.3 per cent figure for the March 2018 quarter may be inflated by buyers trying to get in ahead of the Government’s needless ban of foreign purchasers.

“Mr Twyford claimed Chinese domiciled buyers were buying one-third of Auckland’s houses. He is out by a factor of ten.

“This allegation has now been proven wrong beyond reasonable doubt, first by Land Information New Zealand and now by Stats NZ.

“Ms Ardern and Mr Twyford must apologise. But I won’t hold my breath.”

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