Property Council welcomes Inquiry into land supply

Media Release

10 September 2014

Property Council welcomes Inquiry into land supply

Property Council welcomes the scope of the Productivity Commission’s new inquiry into the supply and development capacity of land for housing.

In its 2011 submission to the Productivity Commission’s Inquiry into Housing Affordability, Property Council argued that although both demand and supply factors impacted on the price of housing, the way local authorities interpret and apply the Resource Management and Local Government Acts significantly impacts the price of land and the cost of developing it.

The Inquiry into Housing Affordability identified that constraints on land supply was a major driver of unaffordability.

The scope of the new inquiry includes how local authorities’ make land available, including infrastructure provision; water and transport infrastructure funding and governance; governance, transparency and accountability of the planning system; leading practice for planning laws; and involvement and engagement with the community.

Property Council’s chief executive Connal Townsend said he was pleased that this inquiry would focus specifically on local authorities making enough land available to meet demand.

“Local and regional authorities have institutionalised land shortages by using planning and zoning policies to contain land within arbitrary urban boundaries and through building height restrictions, which greatly influences the cost of housing.

“This has obviously come to a crisis point in Auckland.”

Property Council has worked assiduously in an attempt to bring the Auckland Plan’s density and intensification targets to reality in the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan (PAUP), however if the Unitary Plan misses these targets, additional land will need to be released.

“Housing supply in Auckland will simply not be met if density targets cannot be achieved and more greenfields land is not released to meet demand.”

While local authorities need to balance the often conflicting needs of present and future residents, they need to have rules and processes that are consistent with the overall vision of enabling urban growth.

“We are delighted that Finance Minister Bill English’s terms of reference to the Productivity Commission considers this.”

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