Budget comment: Jennian Homes director Richard Carver

“The building and construction sector touches the lives of every New Zealander – it is vital for our economic performance and prosperity. But recessive market conditions during the past two years have seen large numbers of New Zealanders adopt a ‘wait and see’ approach to building.

“The simple fact is, building a new home is not going to get any cheaper. We would urge people who’ve been stalling to build now – land prices which were disproportionately high have dropped back to realistic levels in many parts of the country. The greatest catalyst is the GST increase announced in today’s Budget.

“New homes can take weeks, sometimes months to get started, and then several months to build. Higher GST will have less impact the sooner that process is under way.

“Residential building contracts are usually staged to avoid home owners having to pay the total cost upfront.  The Jennian Homes contracts are designed to closely match the building’s progress, so the client is effectively only paying for what has been built.

“Any staged payments that fall after 1 October will incur higher GST, so our advice is to start building now.

“Builders will be under pressure to have homes completed before the increase date and Jennian will always work as efficiently as possible but we will not compromise the finished quality of a client’s lifelong dream home for the sake of meeting a short-term date.”
 
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