Property Institute welcomes Housing Announcement

Tuesday, 16 May 2017

Property Institute welcomes Housing Announcement

Property Institute of New Zealand Chief Executive, Ashley Church, has welcomed today's announcement that Housing New Zealand will build 34,000 new houses in Auckland over the next 10 saying that the initiative will go a long way toward addressing the supply issue in the city.

"Solving the Auckland housing crisis has never been rocket science. We don't need yet more measures to try and curb demand or penalise buyers - we just need to build as many houses as we can, as quickly as possible. Finally, someone has listened and this initiative goes a long way toward achieving that goal".

Mr Church says that he is particularly pleased to see that the announcement includes plans to build a mixture of Social and Private Housing and notes the intention to ensure that some of those will be aimed at first home buyers.

"While the State is a significant Landlord - it's important that the lions share of housing development is targeted at private owners - so the intention to on-sell 20,600 of these homes to private buyers is a crucial aspect of the announcement".

"That said - building these units won't mean much if young people can't afford to buy them - so we'll be looking forward to seeing what else the Government plans to do help first home buyers to get into the market".

Mr Church also applauded the plan to build 13,500 additional homes for Social Housing - although he noted that this actually represented 5,200 new homes as 8,300 rundown State houses were being demolished to make room for these new dwellings.

"But I'm certainly not going to criticise them for that. In demolishing those old dwellings to make way for the new ones they'll be making more efficient use of the land on which they sit and ensuring urban renewal in the affected areas. That's good for the city".

Mr Church said his only really criticism of the plan was the speed at which the building program was being rolled out.

"Once you deduct the 8,300 houses being demolished you're left with 28,700 homes - which is 2,870 new dwellings, per year, over the next ten years. That's not to be sneezed at - but it's a long way short of the 40,000 we need right now".

Mr Church said he was looking forward to seeing what else would be proposed, by all Party's, between now and the election.

"Good as today's announcement is - we still need to see policy announcements around how each Party proposes to get first home buyers and investors interested in building or buying new dwellings, in large numbers, in preference to existing stock - because that's how we'll solve the supply issue. That could take the form of tax incentives, exemptions from the LVR restrictions, construction subsidies, or a mixture of all three - and whichever party cracks it will win that section of the vote".

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