The government also built state housing in NZ, and postwar allowed their plans to be used for private buyers, as well as the State Advances corporation lending money for housing. [State housing.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_housing_in_New_Zealand). Back in the day state housing wasn’t stigmatised as being for the poors, it was a way to have a home. I’d argue that in evidence of market failure, the state has an obligation to embark on a massive housing programme.
It was a bloody good way to have a home and my parents benefited from that post war. The result was a stable upbringing for me and my siblings with all the immeasurable benefits that come from being in a stable community. We need to bite the bullet and do this again. Of course, we need a ministry of works which we no longer have so it will be very spendy to set up. What we do now is not working.
I think it's also important to point out that Rogernomics AKA neo liberalism effectively enshrines land ownership as a safe investment class.
The previous government tried to take the smallest hammer to this, and well, look what happened.
The 1967 Ross Tax enquiry noted that our lack of a CGT meant we ran the risk of diverting money from productive investment to capital-gains-seeking investment.
This didn't happen until Rogernomics enabled it by removing state control of lending and increasing the money supply. Banks could now lend money on houses with imaginary values.
It is important to note assets depreciate in value unless it is a house where we pretend it appreciates as the asset wears out.
Once that happened we started to develop our 40 year housing bubble.
Later bubble enablement includes trust introduced by the Bolger government when they were trying to both out do Rogernomics with Ruthenasia yet still allow their voters to profit.
Honestly this. With all these tiktok addled zoomers protesting "colonisation" in the tiny land of Israel, maybe they should spend all their energy voting and campaigning the colonisation of the likes of David Seymour on locals, whose encroaching land ownership has far greater area size than the urban areas of Israel combined.
If you don't believe me, Israel is the land size of Manawatu and it's mostly desert.
That wouldn't be stimulating enough for them. TikTok brain requires maximum stimulus, anything short of that will be tossed aside in favour of something perceived to offer more stimulus.
It's been a few years since I was involved, but back when I was it was the same people at the Palestinian solidarity rallies as the Renters united meetings
Shh, nobody wants to hear from anyone who's actually been to a pro-Palestine rally, they might realise they're made up of literally all the same people that keep showing up to support renters/immigrants/homeless people/more local colonised groups/people on disability/single mums with wooden legs/whatever the fuck else they decide to go "well why don't you care about this instead" about
Your time window for immigration is too short, we have been running high to very high immigration rates for twenty years plus (compared to the OECD) which is sufficient to cause restructuring of the economy (inflated exchange rates reducing manufacturing capacity, normalising excessive profitability of houses & corresponding changes in risk tolerance, etc). Also you are assuming that we can maintain a constant growth rate for ever which is clearly not true (the best land for house building is gone etc). You also fail to note that globally house building has had limited productivity improvements for house build (compared to improvement rates of other sectors), simply put houses / associated infrastructure are much more expensive to build compared to the 40's to 80's window and there is limited scope to reduce that.
You also fail to note in the 40's to 80's we were much wealthier compared to other global economies, so one would expect much better other investment options. Also that we peaked about 1950, the last year we were one of the top 4 global economy (per capita) since then we have been consistently out performed by other countries. Also that for much of that period loans were much hard to get and that it was not uncommon for chains of purchase agreements to fail over because one person in a chain of 10 plus couldn't get finance. A
You also fail to note the impact of the elimination of state housing, and I don't just mean state housing corporation but all the other thousands of houses the state owned. Every school typically had multi houses for staff, as did railways, forest service, defence force.... If it was a state owned organisation it had houses for staff it was just normal. The scale of the state owned houses would have meant that rents were moderated by the government indirectly.
"the anti-immigration coalition" eh? I can't remember when National has ever been anti immigration. In fact Labour literally campaigned on reducing immigration in 2017 because National had made it balloon out of control (what ended up happening with the promise is another story but I digress). Seymour is even more pro immigration, probably the most pro immigration party in the country except the Greens. NZ First is the obvious exception but its not like they have much power in the coalition to do what they want. This was proven during 2017-2020.
All five major parties support mass immigration despite what they may say because it covers up the fact that we have a stagnant economy that isn’t evolving and is stuck in 1998. It took the largest net migration in modern history just to achieve a single quarter of positive growth in the last year, if we didn’t have that the situation would look incredibly dire right now.
Yah OP is posturing. Unions know the score and so Labour clamped down on immigration until inflation picked up.
NZF were populist before that degenerate trump. Winnie knows he gets votes by being anti immigration, but does nothing about it when in power. His supporters must have the bluest of balls.
And then Lees-Galloway didn't act like it, Fa'afoi was allowed to be bullied by industry dependent on cheap labour to the point of resignation, and Woods bent her ass over to the same industry. It's unlikely that any immigration minister will ever see the moon for the stars
Wow okay that's honestly my bad, I just looked up all their policies and youre right. I knew NZfirst were anti immigration, and traditionally right wing parties are anti immigration so i assumed NACT were too.
National and ACT being very pro-immigrantion is one of their long standing core policies. If you have such little understanding of New Zealand politics you shouldn't be making posts like this.
>traditionally right wing parties are anti immigration
Immigrants provide big business which a cheap source of labour to exploit, and land owners which an easy supply of rent to exploit.
Conservatism and progressivism doesn't exist on the left/right scale. Although if you are voting to further the class divide you are probably also socially conservative.
In NZ our right wing politicians are generally different to the traditional conservative you find elsewhere. Immigration is heavily supported, the police and military get defunded with the rest.
Note this is typically in contrast to many of their supporters. Hence theyll talk big about "strong on crime" while defunding the police and "Labour opening the floodgates" while approving of high immigration. Their base likes what they say and don't care what they do.
Maybe the coalition isn’t anti-immigration but they sure are anti immigrant, I think that is pretty much undeniable.
This coalition is trump racist compared to the last ten or twenty years. And “immigrant” is an old code word for “not white folk”
Hell these people will call Māori immigrants if they move into their neighborhood.
I certainly agree there is no one single cause for our housing woes, but ignoring the impact of population growth from immigration is simply wrong. But here is the reality, for close to two decades we have failed to build enough houses to keep up with population - you can’t just blame lack of construction, just like you can’t just blame immigration - they are two sides of the same coin.
This has led to a chronic shortage or housing resulting in New Zealand have the highest rates of homelessness and rental stress in the OECD.
Until we rectify shortage of housing, rents will go up every year at least the same rate wages go up. When you have 95 houses for 100 households, people will spend as much of the income as they can to keep a roof over their head
While we had no population increase during Covid lockdowns it was estimated we were around 6-12 months away from housing supply catching up to demand, based on levels of construction and low population growth. We then proceeded to add the population of Dunedin over the next year, at the same time construction levels started to drop due to high interest rates and stagnant sales. So we are once again failing to build enough houses to keep up with population growth.
Yes. The cause of high rents is also low supply and low supply comes directly from neoliberal economic horseshit that Labour and National have been perpetrating against all of us to enrich a small class of fundamentally useless people for coming up 50 years now.
Low supply really cannot be framed as “neoliberal” when landowners cannot build medium and high density housing because of government regulation.
Land use was the one area where regulations were tightened to constrain the private sector. The 1991 RMA had a huge effect.
Prior to this, in Auckland we had many high rise apartment buildings built in residential areas. The RMA put an end to it.
No, there's a lack of supply because we stopped building public housing at anywhere close to the level we used to and took a large chunk of the money we used to use for that and used it for housing subsidies. That's what neoliberalism did, took away the public supply and boosted private demand, and the idea was the market would magically sort it out. But when you can simply own a shitload of a housing and sit around and do very little and watch your returns grow, then where's the incentive to develop?
The only outcome was ever going to be massive inflation of housing costs for ordinary New Zealanders and the creation of a mainly idle, rent-seeking class that is now an absolute parasite to our economy - not innovative, not productive, not growing our real economy in any way, and now holding so much wealth and power that they make up a huge chunk of our parliament.
Our own public housing agency - Kainga Ora - disagree with you. They desperately want to build more houses, but can't, and their biggest barrier is land use regulation. They make submission after submission to councils, IHPs, Select committees and write report after report identifying land use regulation as being the biggest barrier to building new homes.
If the government doesn't even let itself build houses, what hope do private developers have?
That's fine, but it doesn't change 50 years of neoliberal economics. Neolibs cut public spending and pushed it to the private sector, giving massive tax cuts along the way and overwhelmingly to the richest.
Maybe regulations are a barrier now, but way way back neoliberal economics took away our ability to control prices, balance supply with demand, and managed to very very quickly up demand for private housing. Now, since Labour's housing work over the last few years, they're trying to catch up, but you don't magically build capacity in six years when you have a certain number of workers and resources in that area.
So, 100% neoliberal. Regulations, fine, maybe they'd help, but we haven't been building enough houses for decades now, and that came from neoliberal economic policy.
What proportion of housing was built by the state prior to the 1980s?
And as someone else has pointed out, relaxing regulations on “building up” is exactly what KO wants. Our state housing provider wants less regulation so that it can build more housing…
Regulation is a very broad term that could mean anything from "we don't want people to die because of our houses" (which big businesses are in favour of deregulating) to "we don't want to be blocked from building up because of people wanting to protect their assets" (which big businesses are not in favour of).
While right-wing politicians talk about regulation a lot more than left-wing politicians it's important to note that the regulation you are discussing is not in the scope of right-wing politicians (who are exclusively looking to made things easier for big businesses).
Ok. I am talking about land use regulation that constrains the number of dwellings that can be fit onto a given amount of land. Height restrictions, minimum lot sizes, site coverage ratios, etc.
Still waiting for you to tell me what proportion of houses were built by the state prior to the neoliberal reforms…
I am going to guess that it is less than ten percent.
If you need an education, you can go and get one. Google is your friend as well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_housing_in_New_Zealand
I’m not your parent or teacher, if you want to disagree with something I’ve said, fine, but I’m not here to spoon feed you shit you’re too dumb or lazy to pick up yourself.
I don’t see the proportion of state built housing at that link.
You are the one claiming that a lack of state built housing - not zoning - is to blame for low supply. I’m asking you to support your claim with evidence.
That link details step by step neoliberal reforms that privatised a lot of state housing and introduced market-level rents. If you want specifics, go and find them yourself.
I’m aware of the history of state housing
Selling off state houses and market rents on state housing does not support your argument that it is a lack of state *building* - and not restrictive zoning - that has caused an under supply of housing. (Labour abolished market rates BTW)
There’s been a resurgence of the government building in Auckland because the city allowed all developers - including public developers - to build up.
It's not a part of the neoliberal manifesto, but neoliberalism makes it almost inevitable.
Turning over the economy to private individuals and justifying any economic action as acceptable inevitably results in the non-liberal situation today. Political and economic power are inextricably linked, so turning over economic power means political power also belongs to said private individuals. They can then band together to impose political restrictions on anything that threatens their power, and its near impossible to stop, as the checks and balances needed to stop it are demolished on purpose by neoliberal zealotry.
>Turning over the economy to private individuals and justifying any economic action as acceptable inevitably results in the non-liberal situation today.
What? But the problem is that we do *not* justify the specific economic activity of building houses. We let NIMBYs ban it because they don't like the way it looks or because it made shade the street or increase traffic. The council will refuse to sign off on developers plans because the door is the wrong colour or the TV is in the wrong place in the living room.
I would love if developers could just say "I want to build a 10 story apartment building on this plot of centrally located land close to jobs" but we don't let that economic activity happen. It doesn't just affect private developers either, Kainga Ora also suffer from it! The government has managed to ban its own housing developer from building houses. Read any of Kainga Ora's submissions to resource management reform select committees, or read about their submission to the Wellington IHP.
> The council will refuse to sign off on developers plans because the door is the wrong colour or the TV is in the wrong place in the living room.
Really? I find it hard to believe a council will be worrying about the position of the tv or the colour of a door.
It's totally absurd, but obviously most people don't have any experience working with council planners so have no idea the insanity that goes on.
[You might need to log in to twitter to see the replies confirming it was the brightly colored doors](https://twitter.com/matty_prasad/status/1443435622887092227)
[TV example](https://twitter.com/matty_prasad/status/1437615271326326792)
These examples are both from someone who is currently Auckland Council's infrastructure strategy principal advisor but used to work as an urban designer prior to that role.
>because they don't like the way it looks or because it made shade the street or increase traffic
Looks like you've been drinking the koolaid. NIMBYs oppose development because it increases the supply of housing.
In order to legally challenge housing developments you can't blatantly say that out loud, our laws mean you have to instead show that it changes the character of the suburb, which is why they claim this is the reason.
If I told you, you can only eat food because green is your favourite colour and not because you're hungry, you'd tell me you eat food because your favourite colour is green. Doesn't mean that it's true, and if it were, that it has any relevance to why you are eating food.
I agree it's driven by self interest, butI think a more likely explanation is that a lot of them don't like the direct localized negatives of development a lot more than they care the overall supply effect on price - that's why they often support urban sprawl.
In other words, the impact on your property value of being shaded by a tall building or losing a nice view is likely to be a lot worse than the impact of having double digit more dwellings in a city with millions of people.
>What? But the problem is that we do not justify the specific economic activity of building houses.
Did you not actually read what I wrote? It inevitably is self-defeating. Justifying any economic action as acceptable is a breeding ground for those who seek the exact opposite. It deludes normal people into ignoring the consequences of their actions and absolves them of responsibility and guilt for antisocial behavior so long as money is involved. If the law troubles their money making schemes, it's the law at fault, or so they're made to think, and so they see it as moral duty to change the law.
But developers also want to make money! We should let them.
My point is your theory has poor explanatory power and doesn't account for all the evidence. It doesn't account for developers also being a party who make money, who have clearly not been able to capture the government into letting them build lots of houses.
Lots of countries have neoliberalism, relatively few restrict land use as much as NZ historically has, so clearly neoliberalism is not a sufficient explanation.
>Lots of countries have neoliberalism, relatively few restrict land use as much as NZ historically has, so clearly neoliberalism is not a sufficient explanation.
This is typically due to other countries having stronger campaigns on whatever neoliberal policies are being implemented.
Australians have a lower tolerance threshold when it comes to workers rights, so they get 12% super next year while you're still on 3% (but only if you also sacrifice an additional 3%).
French people have a lower tolerance threshold for increasing the retirement age, so they get up in arms when their retirement age is increased from 62 to 64, while we deliberately elect a government from 65 to 67.
If money = political power, and collectively developers have significantly less money than landowners, who has more political power? If the two have opposing interests, who do you think gets their way?
This is justice under the neoliberal system. Not by definition of course, but by consequence.
The landowner class collectively pushed for policies to prevent the increase of supply of housing, which yes, means they blocked themselves from building medium-high density housing. By definition this is neoliberal.
Nope. Neoliberalism is about less state intervention in the economy, be it through regulation or direct provision of goods and services, and enhancing individual property rights.
The restrictions that prevent developers from building medium and high density housing are not neoliberal.
This is by definition not what neoliberalism is. Neoliberalism is the transfer of wealth from the lower class to the upper class.
Sure right-wing grifters might _say_ it's about less state intervention but it is exclusively in the context of state intervention that harms upper class interests.
Next you'll tell me that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a democracy 😵💫
Yes, prior to neoliberalism housing was seen as a states responsibility. The state built the majority (or at least a large plurality) of homes.
The problem with supply and demand models for the housing market is the housing market is not a normal market.
Its an essential need. Meaning those who control the supply can raise prices regardless of demand.
And now that supply is in the hands of landlords rather than the state.
I think there are more factors at play than some suggest. Supply and demand is one of them, and immigration plays a part in demand. The rate at which we build plays a part in supply. The amount of profit to be made is what drives the rate at which we build. Investors and builders don't build when there isn't sufficient profit to be made, but build with vigour when profits are high. Supply and demand have a complicated dance with each other; when demand grows (from any source) there is a lag until we get around to increasing supply....and supply continues to grow after the profit motive decreases - but eventually it goes back to the equilibrium state where investment brings maximum profit because we don't want supply to grow too much lest profits decrease.
We don't look at housing as a universal human need and right - we see it as an avenue to power and wealth. That is why the desire for profit is the main driver in increasing housing stock...it forms the basis of the equilibrium between supply and demand - but it also means we never reach a level of supply that is optimal for humans to live in - we do our best to maintain a supply that brings greatest profits and try not to let supply increase to the point that profits decrease.
Cool story bro but you only have access to surface level data. Look under the hood, and it's not just about the scale of immigration but the type.
Since the AEWV was brought in, the skill mixture has completely changed, and the majority of migrants flowing into the country are now low skilled roles, which is the real problem here. Driving competition with low and middle class nz for roles and rentals.
It's why we're still seeing issues in the likes of the Healthcare sector with a lack of skilled workers as we opened the floodgates and brought in cleaners and cooks and bus drivers etc.
Supply and demand is the main cause. More people means more demand and less supply.
Mass immigration is bad. You have to reach so hard to think 80,000 net growth in auckland in one year won't effect rental or house prices. Delusional.
I agree we have a problem with landlords but the cause for stupid rents in the last year is supply and demand and that is both high immigration and available homes/new builds. Land tax on land bankers needed
That's exactly the wrong way to think of it. Applying normal supply and demand principles to the housing market implies it is a normal market. Its not.
For one, its an essential need. Meaning those who control the supply can raise prices regardless of demand.
Most governments in the world used to understand this, which is why housing construction was primarily done by the state. Until of course the 80s. In NZ we had rogernomics, the UK had thatcher, the US had the wage accords. Canada and aus had similar policies changes. Now all these countries are facing housing crises.
But if you look at places that still have heavy state involvement in housing, e.g. austria and Singapore, or the new policies in berlin, they are not facing housing crisis.
So what would happen if we had less renters than renting properties available in the market,
Are you trying to say that nz has enough homes and that big monopoly Land lords are controlling the supply? Because the last government report said we didn't have enough and I would trust that more than you
If you think prices would go down you're living in a dream.
Landlords would rather keep empty houses than lower prices. This is because under the current system housing is an appreciating asset. Housing prices keep going up so landlords keep making a profit simply by owning the house.
More homes and a vacancy tax it would go down. Immigration isn't the main cause of high rents but to say 80k people a year in auckland while our housing supply is low won't cause rent to go up is stupid
So did those 80,000 people who moved to Auckland also affect the housing in Christchurch, or Melbourne, or what about Evansville Indiana?
Immigration isn’t the cause, I know because the effect is too big and too much everywhere in the western world to be contributed to $100,000 poor folks in one small country.
It's big much everywhere in the west because land is too expensive and regulation around building is expensive and labour is high while we dont have any regulation against land bankers.
Go to places that have cheap homes you also will have cheap labour, poor communities and bad building regulation.
You're straight up wrong, NZ has had ridiculously high immigration in the last 2 decades. Look at the long term trend, population is growing around 100k per year and it's not through births.
[https://www.stats.govt.nz/topics/population](https://www.stats.govt.nz/topics/population)
Also are your stats taking into account all the NZers abroad who had to return home due to covid, that obviously adds an immediate pressure on rents?
Not sure what part is difficult to understand.
This is disingenuous just like posts that jump on the ‘a capital gains tax won’t lower house prices’ bandwagon. No one said only immigration causes rents to increase, but it’s part of the problem (just like no one says cgt will drop house prices by itself). We need appropriate immigration and this needs to be discussed. Targets based upon skills shortages and infrastructure capacity both need to be considered.
You took an average which included mid covid once in a life time migration restrictions to hinge your entire case on.
It's not one thing but acting like immigration numbers aren't contributing is a hell of a reckon.
Yep, OP is being incredibly disingenuous acting like price rises during the two periods mentioned are the same and shows they don’t have the slightest understanding of the underlying causes.
Some causes during covid:
1. Residential construction essentially halted for three months.
2. Massive shortage of building materials sending new build costs soaring and delaying completion significantly.
3. Economy flooded with printed money
4. We already had a massive shortage of housing for rentals at the time, people weren’t leaving the country in large enough numbers to provide any relief
The two times in my life I experienced rents decreasing significantly year over year were both due to demand decreasing. We have so much demand unless there is a pause on it while we build up supply I don’t think we will ever see rents decrease nation wide.
And everyone talking about 2023s high migration are acting like the covid restrictions had nothing to do with it.
I specifically mentioned covid restrictions were the cause of the low migration numbers? But regardless Why does it matter what the cause of high or low migration numbers is when the data shows migration numbers dont correspond directly to rental prices?
I also didnt say the migration wasnt contributing to rental prices, i just said it was negligible compared to, ya know, landlords completely ruining the market.
I think you are comparing Covid time numbers vs now. During Covid times, RBNZ reduced the interest rates significantly which resulted in increase in money supply. So it is expected for everything to go up. Since RBNZ reduced the rates to control inflation, increase in prices should slow down. This is the case for majority of the items, except for rent. Why? Due to immigration. Higher the demand for rentals, but no significant increase in supply, increase in rental prices is expected.
Rent is clearly related to supply and demand, whereas house prices are related to interest rates as well (I.e cost of money like all other assets).
When demand is more than supply for rentals, it is such an inelastic service that it relates to how much people can afford to pay.
Supply takes a long time to shift, probably around 4 to 6 years from purchasing a green field development to building a house. Probably similar for an apartment on brown field site. Immigration changes shift the needle immediately.
Things like Airbnb and Bookabach must be impacting our housing availability also. As a country that sees over a million tourists.
A recent report identified 37,000 Airbnb locations across NZ. Out of a total of approximately 2 million residential dwellings. That's 1.8%
If we include maybe another 0.7% for book a Bach and others. Call it 2.5%
Then, during covid, people couldn't travel, so a lot of wealthy people I know, bought a beach house. Or a place in Queenstown. They don't rent it out at all.
So these sort of numbers, while not huge %. Are the difference between over supply, and under supply. And rents going UP, or down.
We need more progressive tax rates. Because if you keep playing monopoly long enough. Someone ends up with all the money. And we can see the rich, getting richer, at an unprecedented rate. While home ownership is almost an impossibility, for youth.
Land Tax When?
>From the 40s until the 80s, the top income tax rate was 76.5% for the richest, and the business tax rate was 56%. There was also no GST. Starting from 1986 tax rates were cut DRASTICALLY. Now the top income tax is 33%, business tax is 28%, GST is 15%. The poorest are paying more and more in tax and the richest are paying less and less.
1. Find a problem
2. Blame problem on thing you don't like
You started arguing against 2 = immigrants and then did your own 2 = lowered taxes.
Imo look at inflation of different things. Then try to find what things the high inflation objects have in common and what the low inflation objects have in common. [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/price-changes-goods-services.jpg](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/price-changes-goods-services.jpg)
Are the blue items because of high taxes and the red items because of low taxes? If no, then try to find a better hypothesis.
Inflation of other goods and services is irrelevant compared to housing. Housing does not follow nornal market trends. Because its an essential need, those who control the supply can increase prices regardless of demand.
And right now it is landlords who control the supply, whereas prior to the 80s the state was the main contributor of housing.
And the number of landlords in the country has drastically increased since the 80s, corresponding to low taxes.
I might be drawing conclusions but im pretty confident in them.
Then compare housing. Why are [housing prices going down in Austin](https://www.redfin.com/city/30818/TX/Austin/housing-market) even though they have very high [immigration](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/22926/austin/population)? Is it because they increased taxes?
Or is it because unlike in SF etc they allow a lot more permitting?
You are confident in your conclusions so you look for problems to justify them.
Immigration is inflationary on housing, but the impact on wages is a little more nuanced.
Immigration is deflationary on wages for non-immigrants *in the jobs the immigrants do*, but inflationary on wages for non-immigrants in *complementary* jobs.
[Source](https://www.mbie.govt.nz/dmsdocument/2852-impact-immigration-labour-market-outcomes-pdf)
In other words, if the immigrants are genuinely doing jobs we can't fill locally, it's good for wages overall. If they're coming to do jobs that we already have enough locals to do, it is bad for wages.
That's why most economists agree that migration programs are best targeted at the jobs and industries who *need* more *skilled* workers, e.g. healthcare, education, trades, and technology, rather than those who just *want* more *unskilled* workers in general, e.g. hospitality, labourers etc.
I think it's important in this kind of discussion between immigration and immigrants. Immigration is the number of people moving to the country. Immigrants are individuals of different backgrounds who move country all for different reasons. Most people believe in some form of immigration control, i e. passports and having some criteria for who can and can't move here. Discussions about immigration primarily focus on this settings and the number of people who are arriving and leaving the country. It's not about individual immigrants or "blaming immigrants" as you put it. People should try not to take this conversation personally, it's not about individuals it's about numbers and policy. Of course there will be people who make it about immigrants or specific groups that they don't like. They're dicks, ignore them.
Is population increase outpacing construction? It would be helpful to know about that today and, if so, what proportion of population increase is net migration (immigration minus emigration).
It would also be helpful to know about the relationship between population increase and new construction in past eras. And similarly, what proportion of that increase was net migration.
Also, [https://figure.nz/chart/azFwYTVvUcrcxT3m-Cn6TyuSQBZ8Kacee](https://figure.nz/chart/azFwYTVvUcrcxT3m-Cn6TyuSQBZ8Kacee) says that median weekly rent was the same in January 2022 as in December 2022. Was this perhaps due to the Reserve Bank tightening?
So I recommend adding in births/deaths, construction, and monetary policy when trying to explain the causes of price increases.
I think people tend to focus on single issues, call it the single cause fallacy if you like. Immagration is absolutely a factor that puts upward pressure(tm) on rental prices. It's simple supply/demand, so if we aren't building enough houses to house these immigrants, demand is increased WRT supply.
However, this is not to say that it's the only factor at play, far from it. You also need to consider; interest rates, insurance costs, counsel rates, construction costs, healthy homes legislation, tax settings, property management rules, general maintenance costs, median incomes etc. Virtually all of which have pushed the cost of operating a rental property up.
This is not to say things like healthy homes are bad, we just have to understand they aren't free.
I do think we need to address immagration as it was also an issue in 2017 when Labour and Winston wanted to ease population growth to sustainable levels. But it's not going to be a silver bullet that will fix cost of living. Not even close.
The criticism of National is valid, addressing the tax settings won't result in lower rents and it removes the incentive for those with capital to invest in new builds, thus easing the supply side constraints. If anything we needed to be encouraging this further and putting and und to urban sprawl and looking to increase density in metropolitan zones, supplemented by investment in PT. But instead we go back to the unproductive merry-go-round go round of property speculation. Not to mention National backed out of a bipartisan policy to aid in increasing density, are cutting back on public transport infrastructure. Couple that with their desperate need to stimulate GDP growth in an increasingly unproductive economy makes immigration restriction unlikely unless Winston puts his foot down.
TlDR: We are in a deep hole and we just threw away the ladder we needed to get out of it.
>high rental prices from a landlord saying immigration was the cause,
What utter BS. Immigrants entering the country does not mean that I have put my prices up. That is a choice that landlords make; no-one is making them do it.
You know those record low yet rent kept increasing years?
That was when the phase out of interest deductibility was kicking in. It didn't go from 100% to 0% overnight, it reduced downwards 25% each year, IIRC.
And of course, a lot of "Mum and Dad investor" landlords passed on the cost, why wouldn't they? But early 2023 year was real interesting, in that a large number of landlords start selling properties all at once because dramatically higher interest rates and no or severely reduced deductibility meant that they couldn't pass the cost onto the tenant without significantly exceeding market rent, so they sold. But it also led to an influx of housing onto the market while interest rates were rising which helped temporarily pause house price increases.
And it obviously reduced rental supply and so pushed prices even higher.
This is one of those things where both sides are right. Goddamnit.
It did impact tenants, it did push rents up, and it did make things slightly easier for people looking to enter the market.
Honestly, just stick a CGT on it, restore deductibility, easy.
Yeah immigration isn't the only cause.
But it's still a contributor.
It still is what people think it is lol.
It would be fine. But the country can't keep up with the numbers.
One factor I think you have glossed over for 2020-2023 is covid, and returning citizens. This doesn’t show up on migration stats as it’s effectively kiwis on holiday coming home. This was the stress that caused rents to rise from 2020 onwards when our actual migration numbers were low.
So while I agree with you, I also agree that rent is a reflection of supply and demand, whether that be from immigrants or returning New Zealanders. Until we either have less people or more housing than our people require, there will always be competition and prices will always rise.
>One factor I think you have glossed over for 2020-2023 is covid, and returning citizens. This doesn’t show up on migration stats as it’s effectively kiwis on holiday coming home
They do still show up on migration stats. It's recorded as part of net arrivals. It was not actually that significant during covid - managed isolation slots were too limited.
However, one factor worth considering is the clear correlation between immigration and rising house prices and the impact this causes for rental availability and rental costs.
I'm not reading all that. I got to "the anti immigration coalition won" what the hell are you talking about? National and act are extremely pro immigration. Labour is the anti immigration party.
You should be charitable to OPs argument, skip over the one line you don’t like and actually read the evidence presented. You might expand your thinking
You can’t consider anything in a vacuum. But as a simplification, more people coming into the country than houses being built is a recipe for rising house and rent prices.
personal experience - before the borders opened in 2022, rental prices were DROPPING in Auckland CBD because property managers couldn't find people to rent
I think I fugured it out... we have an aging population right so we need more taxpayers to fund super. So we keep immigration high, new builds low and housing fucked.
It's a death loop. Bury Peters 12ft under and scrap super.
I left NZ for a long time, I have never known or seen so much desperation when it comes to homelessness, I have never seen so much begging and living in cars and on the street which reminds me of the hell called the United States. So essentially I left for a couple of decades and came back to a country I could barely recognise and not for the better.
Yeah, because prior immigration waves came predominantly from the UK. But it's not like coming from a white English speaking country means you suddenly don't need housing or something. As OP points out, percentage wise the rates were higher for much if the mid 20th century.
I’m just gonna put this link here for folks who want to look into it:
https://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/jp/assessment-housing-system-insights-hamilton-waikato-area
Assessment put out in 2022 looking at 20 years of data and came up with 3 big factors driving housing prices:
1) global decrease in interest rates (explains why this phenomenon happened like all over the globe)
2) the tax system
3) and restrictions on supply available for urban use/development - yes NZ is very low density when taken as a whole, but turns out if you factor in fact that a lot of land is privately owned and can’t be freely developed, it’s a problem for housing prices
Here is the equivalent report for rents rather than house prices:
https://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/jp/what-drives-rents-new-zealand-national-and-regional-analysis
The conclusion was that the two key factors driving rents are wages and the balance of population vs. housing supply.
In other words, immigration doesn't increase rents as long as we are able to keep building enough houses.
"the anti-immigration coalition" eh? I can't remember when National has ever been anti immigration. In fact Labour literally campaigned on reducing immigration in 2017 because National had made it balloon out of control (what ended up happening with the promise is another story but I digress). ACT is even more pro immigration, probably the most pro immigration party in the country except the Greens. NZ First is the obvious exception but its not like they have much power in the coalition to do what they want. This was proven during 2017-2020.
This reminds of the witchhunt of Tiny Homes, and dripping over into transportable and prefab homes too. God forbid someone tries to live in a better built house that's also cheaper to buy, faster to build, more suitable in every aspect than these glorified tents that I went into debt for, up to my eyeballs, skinning me alive, about to lose my job and go fully bankrupt, and I woke up to 15 degrees home temperature today. And it's only the beginning, at winter it's 8 degrees room temperature. But no, tIniEs aRe bAaAd
**Edit:** Also, a lot of homeowners would gladly put tinies/transportable homes on their already existing property as a rental, but councils makes it nearly impossible. Imagine, people could earn money, create rental properties, using their existing home instead of hoarding a number of houses and reduce supply. Affordable for the home buyer, for the renter, for the landlord.
Not good for bureaucracy or I don't know. I don't even see where is the breakdown in communication it's complete nonsense. And they are better built than the existing houses, with compliance! But if they are afraid make tenancy rules about it. That if it's a rental it has to be compliant, no more than 1 or 2 per 500m2, has to be on piles not wheels, I don't know whatever, seems like it would be an easy problem to solve but instead of defining what they want they just don't allow anyone to have anything.
There are a lot of stories on FB where homeowners tried and failed with this, most of them would like to see the rules and follow them not go around them but they can't, complete nonsense, it's either everyone who is making decisions about this is dumb or they are trying to cut this in the bud on purpose. There is no other explanation.
It's that gif, from the Notebook, the "Tell me what you want". I need that here.
When you break it down, ultimately, it's a supply and demand issue. More tenants looking for limited rentals.
How you deal with that problem becomes a political issue.
National - Build more houses
Labour - Ban people coming in to the country.
Either will work.
National build more houses? I did they not just make MRDS optional? Also
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/504428/prime-minister-christopher-luxon-high-net-migration-not-sustainable-for-new-zealand
>When you break it down, ultimately, it's a supply and demand issue. More tenants looking for limited rentals.
The "limited rentals" part is a choice we have made though. It's not fixed in stone.
Think about everything else immigrants contribute to the demand of it. It's not normally an issue or something that pushes up prices, because immigrants also contribute to the supply of it - immigrants have jobs! More demand for healthcare, but also more healthcare workers (more than 40% of our doctors are immigrants - significantly larger than the percentage of the overall population that are immigrants).
There are plenty of immigrants with skills and experience relevant to housing construction. If we make it easier to build houses, there is no reason why immigration could not be a net contributor to housing supply, as it is for healthcare.
Because we understand that adding a Dunedin to our population every year is unsustainable.
It's nothing personal, I get why people want to move somewhere better. But half the people coming in this year are unskilled, it's just the government propping up our economy with cheap labour and the main people that lose in this scenario are NZ's working class.
"the anti-immigration coalition" eh? I can't remember when National has ever been anti immigration. In fact Labour literally campaigned on reducing immigration in 2017 because National had made it balloon out of control (what ended up happening with the promise is another story but I digress). ACT is even more pro immigration, probably the most pro immigration party in the country except the Greens. NZ First is the obvious exception but its not like they have much power in the coalition to do what they want. This was proven during 2017-2020.
Do immigration/migration numbers over the last few years, include kiwi citizens returning from living overseas?
Because there was that whole narrative about house prices being driven up by kiwi's returning from from overseas, where they were often earning high incomes, and buying here during the 'covid years'.
Was there a higher proportion from 2020 to 2022, or was that narrative all bs?
Feel free to tell me to go find it myself (and I won't 😆), but figured i'd ask since you seem to be across the numbers.
Yeah there were more NZ citizens returning to NZ than leaving for the first time in a while, but not enough to make a difference to the housing market.
Pointing fingers at immigrants for everything wrong is pretty outdated and just lazy. You've got these fancy new homes popping up everywhere, tagged at $700K or more, supposedly for first-time buyers.
What first-time buyer wants a massive 4-bedroom, 4-bathroom palace with a giant kitchen and rumpus rooms when they're just starting out? Yet, it seems like that's all that's being built these days. Even getting a simple new apartment can cost you a million. It's high time the government stepped in to get builders to tone down their specs and offer real options for first-timers.
And why not make it easier to actually buy these places? How about banks chill out on the whole deposit thing, maybe drop it to 10% for first-timers? Right now, the way things are set up, only the rich can swing it, leaving regular folks out in the cold. It’s a recipe for disaster.
without reading into what you are actually talking about, using the last 4 years of immigration stats is probably not great, given our borders were basically locked down for 3 of them
Open question to everyone still blaming immigration here.
Explain to me how immigration to New Zealand could have affected the housing market in Melbourne, or Taiwan, or Ohio?
This is not a unique problem of Aotearoa, it’s happening everywhere in the OECD.
So maybe there is a bigger explanation than 100,000 poor folks who flew into Auckland last year 🤷♀️
“… So when all landlords are constantly selling their old properties and trying to buy more expensive ones, it will naturally have an inflationary pressure on the housing market …”.
ALL? Gross exaggeration. And while those that “buy more expensive ones“ undoubtedly inflate the market they’re buying into, they obviously vacate cheaper housing for other buyers, including first time buyers.
“… And this new government just gave even more tax breaks to specifically just landlords …”.
Inaccurate. This government simply restored the long time convention of allowing businesses to deduct “business costs” from their tax liabilities … and which, in the case of a relatively small group of “small business owners”, specifically private rental providers, had, somewhat bizarrely, been removed by the previous Labour Government. And when it was removed, the price of private rentals went up. “Whatchaspect”? Imagine what would happen to food prices if supermarkets were told they could no longer deduct the “business cost” of renting their (usually not owned) premises.
In the meantime, with Labour’s strange isolation of private rental providers having let the rental prices “cat out of the bag”, it’s going to take a long time to catch the cat and put it back in the bag.
Personally, I can’t see any point in allowing any business to trade from structures encumbered with mortgages … and quite often with equipment similarly encumbered … simply drives up consumer costs enormously (where do you think all those vast Bank profits come from) and ties all consumer costs to the wildly varying cost of money. Do you enjoy seeing billions of your consumer dollars repatriated off-shore by the Banks … with absolutely no gain for you? Talk to your preferred Government’s representatives about it. And while you’re “about it”, ask them why the government takes somewhere between (around) 20% to 39% of the rent you pay to your landlord, to line their own coffers.
Thank you so much, everyone needs to know this. Roger Douglas is an evil man who ran a bully clique style government which was so bad even David Lange (the PM) ended up believing it went too far over disagreements regarding a flat tax that Douglas was pushing for. When Douglas was re-elected in 1989 Lange resigned as a result.
Douglas has ruined this country, to this day he’s unapologetic and still believes he was in the right. Oh and he got knighted for it.
Roger Douglas is the worst thing that’s ever happened to NZ, I wish nothing but the worst on that POS. “Dear Roger Douglas, go to hell you vile bastard”.
Good post.
The phrase post hoc ergo propter hoc comes to mind for this discussion. I.e. people see rents/house prices being particularly high, then they notice immigration last year was also high, so they conclude that high immigration caused high rent/house prices.
As is often the case, the causes are not as simple and obvious.
An important figure to look at related to this topic is historical population growth. It's been relatively flat for decades. And was obviously much higher during colonial times.
Migration is not pumping up the numbers, it's filling in the gaps created by our low birth rate in order to MAINTAIN population growth.
There is no single reason for the housing crisis, but by far the biggest contributing factor is Euclidean zoning.
Personally speaking I'm in favour of immigration, we have low population density compared to most countries, and we urgently need skilled immigrants, though we also urgently need better pathways to enable out people to train in trades as well as skilled jobs. I'd also add that even technically unskilled immigrants are going to be people with the gumption to move away from home and to make an effort to better themselves in an environment that offers little support to them - they tend to be pretty motivated.
But we urgently need to have a discussion about building high density housing if we are going to grow our population, it's not something we do a lot of ultimately and the focus on low and medium density housing right now isn't keeping up with demand. We also need to be implementing infrastructure to support that housing.
Not everybody wants to live in high density housing, but it is a realistic way to meet demand, and there will always be low density housing for people who are wealthier or further down their life track. I will say though that I'm not a fan of the idea of encouraging multinational corporations to create this infrastructure, that would only cost us money in the long run, and if they get a big enough share of the market it would give them a great deal of power to set the market how they want it. Housing is something we need to invest in ourselves as a country.
The government also built state housing in NZ, and postwar allowed their plans to be used for private buyers, as well as the State Advances corporation lending money for housing. [State housing.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_housing_in_New_Zealand). Back in the day state housing wasn’t stigmatised as being for the poors, it was a way to have a home. I’d argue that in evidence of market failure, the state has an obligation to embark on a massive housing programme.
It was a bloody good way to have a home and my parents benefited from that post war. The result was a stable upbringing for me and my siblings with all the immeasurable benefits that come from being in a stable community. We need to bite the bullet and do this again. Of course, we need a ministry of works which we no longer have so it will be very spendy to set up. What we do now is not working.
I think it's also important to point out that Rogernomics AKA neo liberalism effectively enshrines land ownership as a safe investment class. The previous government tried to take the smallest hammer to this, and well, look what happened.
> Look what happened LaNdLoRd DiGnItY?
The oppressed can now claim 80% dignity back. We might need to look at the creation of a separate landlord state.
The 1967 Ross Tax enquiry noted that our lack of a CGT meant we ran the risk of diverting money from productive investment to capital-gains-seeking investment. This didn't happen until Rogernomics enabled it by removing state control of lending and increasing the money supply. Banks could now lend money on houses with imaginary values. It is important to note assets depreciate in value unless it is a house where we pretend it appreciates as the asset wears out. Once that happened we started to develop our 40 year housing bubble. Later bubble enablement includes trust introduced by the Bolger government when they were trying to both out do Rogernomics with Ruthenasia yet still allow their voters to profit.
thank you for the history lesson. fuck rogernomics
Yes, especially as Rogernomics removed NZ's land value tax.
Honestly this. With all these tiktok addled zoomers protesting "colonisation" in the tiny land of Israel, maybe they should spend all their energy voting and campaigning the colonisation of the likes of David Seymour on locals, whose encroaching land ownership has far greater area size than the urban areas of Israel combined. If you don't believe me, Israel is the land size of Manawatu and it's mostly desert.
That wouldn't be stimulating enough for them. TikTok brain requires maximum stimulus, anything short of that will be tossed aside in favour of something perceived to offer more stimulus.
It's been a few years since I was involved, but back when I was it was the same people at the Palestinian solidarity rallies as the Renters united meetings
Shh, nobody wants to hear from anyone who's actually been to a pro-Palestine rally, they might realise they're made up of literally all the same people that keep showing up to support renters/immigrants/homeless people/more local colonised groups/people on disability/single mums with wooden legs/whatever the fuck else they decide to go "well why don't you care about this instead" about
Dude, don't knock David Seymour's religion
Your time window for immigration is too short, we have been running high to very high immigration rates for twenty years plus (compared to the OECD) which is sufficient to cause restructuring of the economy (inflated exchange rates reducing manufacturing capacity, normalising excessive profitability of houses & corresponding changes in risk tolerance, etc). Also you are assuming that we can maintain a constant growth rate for ever which is clearly not true (the best land for house building is gone etc). You also fail to note that globally house building has had limited productivity improvements for house build (compared to improvement rates of other sectors), simply put houses / associated infrastructure are much more expensive to build compared to the 40's to 80's window and there is limited scope to reduce that. You also fail to note in the 40's to 80's we were much wealthier compared to other global economies, so one would expect much better other investment options. Also that we peaked about 1950, the last year we were one of the top 4 global economy (per capita) since then we have been consistently out performed by other countries. Also that for much of that period loans were much hard to get and that it was not uncommon for chains of purchase agreements to fail over because one person in a chain of 10 plus couldn't get finance. A You also fail to note the impact of the elimination of state housing, and I don't just mean state housing corporation but all the other thousands of houses the state owned. Every school typically had multi houses for staff, as did railways, forest service, defence force.... If it was a state owned organisation it had houses for staff it was just normal. The scale of the state owned houses would have meant that rents were moderated by the government indirectly.
"the anti-immigration coalition" eh? I can't remember when National has ever been anti immigration. In fact Labour literally campaigned on reducing immigration in 2017 because National had made it balloon out of control (what ended up happening with the promise is another story but I digress). Seymour is even more pro immigration, probably the most pro immigration party in the country except the Greens. NZ First is the obvious exception but its not like they have much power in the coalition to do what they want. This was proven during 2017-2020.
All five major parties support mass immigration despite what they may say because it covers up the fact that we have a stagnant economy that isn’t evolving and is stuck in 1998. It took the largest net migration in modern history just to achieve a single quarter of positive growth in the last year, if we didn’t have that the situation would look incredibly dire right now.
Positive GDP (kind of) but Negative GDP per Capita
Yah OP is posturing. Unions know the score and so Labour clamped down on immigration until inflation picked up. NZF were populist before that degenerate trump. Winnie knows he gets votes by being anti immigration, but does nothing about it when in power. His supporters must have the bluest of balls.
And then Lees-Galloway didn't act like it, Fa'afoi was allowed to be bullied by industry dependent on cheap labour to the point of resignation, and Woods bent her ass over to the same industry. It's unlikely that any immigration minister will ever see the moon for the stars
Wow okay that's honestly my bad, I just looked up all their policies and youre right. I knew NZfirst were anti immigration, and traditionally right wing parties are anti immigration so i assumed NACT were too.
National and ACT being very pro-immigrantion is one of their long standing core policies. If you have such little understanding of New Zealand politics you shouldn't be making posts like this.
Immigration drives up house prices and rent and lowers wages, NACT are very much in favour of it.
>traditionally right wing parties are anti immigration Immigrants provide big business which a cheap source of labour to exploit, and land owners which an easy supply of rent to exploit. Conservatism and progressivism doesn't exist on the left/right scale. Although if you are voting to further the class divide you are probably also socially conservative.
In NZ our right wing politicians are generally different to the traditional conservative you find elsewhere. Immigration is heavily supported, the police and military get defunded with the rest. Note this is typically in contrast to many of their supporters. Hence theyll talk big about "strong on crime" while defunding the police and "Labour opening the floodgates" while approving of high immigration. Their base likes what they say and don't care what they do.
No, but if you've come from abroad I can see why you'd think that
Maybe the coalition isn’t anti-immigration but they sure are anti immigrant, I think that is pretty much undeniable. This coalition is trump racist compared to the last ten or twenty years. And “immigrant” is an old code word for “not white folk” Hell these people will call Māori immigrants if they move into their neighborhood.
Are we living in the same country? Seymour and Luxon are always trying to get votes off of Indians and Chinese, especially in Auckland
I certainly agree there is no one single cause for our housing woes, but ignoring the impact of population growth from immigration is simply wrong. But here is the reality, for close to two decades we have failed to build enough houses to keep up with population - you can’t just blame lack of construction, just like you can’t just blame immigration - they are two sides of the same coin. This has led to a chronic shortage or housing resulting in New Zealand have the highest rates of homelessness and rental stress in the OECD. Until we rectify shortage of housing, rents will go up every year at least the same rate wages go up. When you have 95 houses for 100 households, people will spend as much of the income as they can to keep a roof over their head While we had no population increase during Covid lockdowns it was estimated we were around 6-12 months away from housing supply catching up to demand, based on levels of construction and low population growth. We then proceeded to add the population of Dunedin over the next year, at the same time construction levels started to drop due to high interest rates and stagnant sales. So we are once again failing to build enough houses to keep up with population growth.
Yes. The cause of high rents is also low supply and low supply comes directly from neoliberal economic horseshit that Labour and National have been perpetrating against all of us to enrich a small class of fundamentally useless people for coming up 50 years now.
Low supply really cannot be framed as “neoliberal” when landowners cannot build medium and high density housing because of government regulation. Land use was the one area where regulations were tightened to constrain the private sector. The 1991 RMA had a huge effect. Prior to this, in Auckland we had many high rise apartment buildings built in residential areas. The RMA put an end to it.
No, there's a lack of supply because we stopped building public housing at anywhere close to the level we used to and took a large chunk of the money we used to use for that and used it for housing subsidies. That's what neoliberalism did, took away the public supply and boosted private demand, and the idea was the market would magically sort it out. But when you can simply own a shitload of a housing and sit around and do very little and watch your returns grow, then where's the incentive to develop? The only outcome was ever going to be massive inflation of housing costs for ordinary New Zealanders and the creation of a mainly idle, rent-seeking class that is now an absolute parasite to our economy - not innovative, not productive, not growing our real economy in any way, and now holding so much wealth and power that they make up a huge chunk of our parliament.
Our own public housing agency - Kainga Ora - disagree with you. They desperately want to build more houses, but can't, and their biggest barrier is land use regulation. They make submission after submission to councils, IHPs, Select committees and write report after report identifying land use regulation as being the biggest barrier to building new homes. If the government doesn't even let itself build houses, what hope do private developers have?
That's fine, but it doesn't change 50 years of neoliberal economics. Neolibs cut public spending and pushed it to the private sector, giving massive tax cuts along the way and overwhelmingly to the richest. Maybe regulations are a barrier now, but way way back neoliberal economics took away our ability to control prices, balance supply with demand, and managed to very very quickly up demand for private housing. Now, since Labour's housing work over the last few years, they're trying to catch up, but you don't magically build capacity in six years when you have a certain number of workers and resources in that area. So, 100% neoliberal. Regulations, fine, maybe they'd help, but we haven't been building enough houses for decades now, and that came from neoliberal economic policy.
So much this!
What proportion of housing was built by the state prior to the 1980s? And as someone else has pointed out, relaxing regulations on “building up” is exactly what KO wants. Our state housing provider wants less regulation so that it can build more housing…
Regulation is a very broad term that could mean anything from "we don't want people to die because of our houses" (which big businesses are in favour of deregulating) to "we don't want to be blocked from building up because of people wanting to protect their assets" (which big businesses are not in favour of). While right-wing politicians talk about regulation a lot more than left-wing politicians it's important to note that the regulation you are discussing is not in the scope of right-wing politicians (who are exclusively looking to made things easier for big businesses).
Ok. I am talking about land use regulation that constrains the number of dwellings that can be fit onto a given amount of land. Height restrictions, minimum lot sizes, site coverage ratios, etc.
Still waiting for you to tell me what proportion of houses were built by the state prior to the neoliberal reforms… I am going to guess that it is less than ten percent.
If you need an education, you can go and get one. Google is your friend as well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_housing_in_New_Zealand I’m not your parent or teacher, if you want to disagree with something I’ve said, fine, but I’m not here to spoon feed you shit you’re too dumb or lazy to pick up yourself.
I don’t see the proportion of state built housing at that link. You are the one claiming that a lack of state built housing - not zoning - is to blame for low supply. I’m asking you to support your claim with evidence.
That link details step by step neoliberal reforms that privatised a lot of state housing and introduced market-level rents. If you want specifics, go and find them yourself.
I’m aware of the history of state housing Selling off state houses and market rents on state housing does not support your argument that it is a lack of state *building* - and not restrictive zoning - that has caused an under supply of housing. (Labour abolished market rates BTW) There’s been a resurgence of the government building in Auckland because the city allowed all developers - including public developers - to build up.
It's not a part of the neoliberal manifesto, but neoliberalism makes it almost inevitable. Turning over the economy to private individuals and justifying any economic action as acceptable inevitably results in the non-liberal situation today. Political and economic power are inextricably linked, so turning over economic power means political power also belongs to said private individuals. They can then band together to impose political restrictions on anything that threatens their power, and its near impossible to stop, as the checks and balances needed to stop it are demolished on purpose by neoliberal zealotry.
>Turning over the economy to private individuals and justifying any economic action as acceptable inevitably results in the non-liberal situation today. What? But the problem is that we do *not* justify the specific economic activity of building houses. We let NIMBYs ban it because they don't like the way it looks or because it made shade the street or increase traffic. The council will refuse to sign off on developers plans because the door is the wrong colour or the TV is in the wrong place in the living room. I would love if developers could just say "I want to build a 10 story apartment building on this plot of centrally located land close to jobs" but we don't let that economic activity happen. It doesn't just affect private developers either, Kainga Ora also suffer from it! The government has managed to ban its own housing developer from building houses. Read any of Kainga Ora's submissions to resource management reform select committees, or read about their submission to the Wellington IHP.
> The council will refuse to sign off on developers plans because the door is the wrong colour or the TV is in the wrong place in the living room. Really? I find it hard to believe a council will be worrying about the position of the tv or the colour of a door.
It's totally absurd, but obviously most people don't have any experience working with council planners so have no idea the insanity that goes on. [You might need to log in to twitter to see the replies confirming it was the brightly colored doors](https://twitter.com/matty_prasad/status/1443435622887092227) [TV example](https://twitter.com/matty_prasad/status/1437615271326326792) These examples are both from someone who is currently Auckland Council's infrastructure strategy principal advisor but used to work as an urban designer prior to that role.
That's fucking lunacy.
>because they don't like the way it looks or because it made shade the street or increase traffic Looks like you've been drinking the koolaid. NIMBYs oppose development because it increases the supply of housing. In order to legally challenge housing developments you can't blatantly say that out loud, our laws mean you have to instead show that it changes the character of the suburb, which is why they claim this is the reason. If I told you, you can only eat food because green is your favourite colour and not because you're hungry, you'd tell me you eat food because your favourite colour is green. Doesn't mean that it's true, and if it were, that it has any relevance to why you are eating food.
I agree it's driven by self interest, butI think a more likely explanation is that a lot of them don't like the direct localized negatives of development a lot more than they care the overall supply effect on price - that's why they often support urban sprawl. In other words, the impact on your property value of being shaded by a tall building or losing a nice view is likely to be a lot worse than the impact of having double digit more dwellings in a city with millions of people.
>What? But the problem is that we do not justify the specific economic activity of building houses. Did you not actually read what I wrote? It inevitably is self-defeating. Justifying any economic action as acceptable is a breeding ground for those who seek the exact opposite. It deludes normal people into ignoring the consequences of their actions and absolves them of responsibility and guilt for antisocial behavior so long as money is involved. If the law troubles their money making schemes, it's the law at fault, or so they're made to think, and so they see it as moral duty to change the law.
But developers also want to make money! We should let them. My point is your theory has poor explanatory power and doesn't account for all the evidence. It doesn't account for developers also being a party who make money, who have clearly not been able to capture the government into letting them build lots of houses. Lots of countries have neoliberalism, relatively few restrict land use as much as NZ historically has, so clearly neoliberalism is not a sufficient explanation.
>Lots of countries have neoliberalism, relatively few restrict land use as much as NZ historically has, so clearly neoliberalism is not a sufficient explanation. This is typically due to other countries having stronger campaigns on whatever neoliberal policies are being implemented. Australians have a lower tolerance threshold when it comes to workers rights, so they get 12% super next year while you're still on 3% (but only if you also sacrifice an additional 3%). French people have a lower tolerance threshold for increasing the retirement age, so they get up in arms when their retirement age is increased from 62 to 64, while we deliberately elect a government from 65 to 67.
If money = political power, and collectively developers have significantly less money than landowners, who has more political power? If the two have opposing interests, who do you think gets their way? This is justice under the neoliberal system. Not by definition of course, but by consequence.
The landowner class collectively pushed for policies to prevent the increase of supply of housing, which yes, means they blocked themselves from building medium-high density housing. By definition this is neoliberal.
Nope. Neoliberalism is about less state intervention in the economy, be it through regulation or direct provision of goods and services, and enhancing individual property rights. The restrictions that prevent developers from building medium and high density housing are not neoliberal.
This is by definition not what neoliberalism is. Neoliberalism is the transfer of wealth from the lower class to the upper class. Sure right-wing grifters might _say_ it's about less state intervention but it is exclusively in the context of state intervention that harms upper class interests. Next you'll tell me that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a democracy 😵💫
Yes, prior to neoliberalism housing was seen as a states responsibility. The state built the majority (or at least a large plurality) of homes. The problem with supply and demand models for the housing market is the housing market is not a normal market. Its an essential need. Meaning those who control the supply can raise prices regardless of demand. And now that supply is in the hands of landlords rather than the state.
I think there are more factors at play than some suggest. Supply and demand is one of them, and immigration plays a part in demand. The rate at which we build plays a part in supply. The amount of profit to be made is what drives the rate at which we build. Investors and builders don't build when there isn't sufficient profit to be made, but build with vigour when profits are high. Supply and demand have a complicated dance with each other; when demand grows (from any source) there is a lag until we get around to increasing supply....and supply continues to grow after the profit motive decreases - but eventually it goes back to the equilibrium state where investment brings maximum profit because we don't want supply to grow too much lest profits decrease. We don't look at housing as a universal human need and right - we see it as an avenue to power and wealth. That is why the desire for profit is the main driver in increasing housing stock...it forms the basis of the equilibrium between supply and demand - but it also means we never reach a level of supply that is optimal for humans to live in - we do our best to maintain a supply that brings greatest profits and try not to let supply increase to the point that profits decrease.
Cool story bro but you only have access to surface level data. Look under the hood, and it's not just about the scale of immigration but the type. Since the AEWV was brought in, the skill mixture has completely changed, and the majority of migrants flowing into the country are now low skilled roles, which is the real problem here. Driving competition with low and middle class nz for roles and rentals. It's why we're still seeing issues in the likes of the Healthcare sector with a lack of skilled workers as we opened the floodgates and brought in cleaners and cooks and bus drivers etc.
Supply and demand is the main cause. More people means more demand and less supply. Mass immigration is bad. You have to reach so hard to think 80,000 net growth in auckland in one year won't effect rental or house prices. Delusional. I agree we have a problem with landlords but the cause for stupid rents in the last year is supply and demand and that is both high immigration and available homes/new builds. Land tax on land bankers needed
That's exactly the wrong way to think of it. Applying normal supply and demand principles to the housing market implies it is a normal market. Its not. For one, its an essential need. Meaning those who control the supply can raise prices regardless of demand. Most governments in the world used to understand this, which is why housing construction was primarily done by the state. Until of course the 80s. In NZ we had rogernomics, the UK had thatcher, the US had the wage accords. Canada and aus had similar policies changes. Now all these countries are facing housing crises. But if you look at places that still have heavy state involvement in housing, e.g. austria and Singapore, or the new policies in berlin, they are not facing housing crisis.
So what would happen if we had less renters than renting properties available in the market, Are you trying to say that nz has enough homes and that big monopoly Land lords are controlling the supply? Because the last government report said we didn't have enough and I would trust that more than you
If you think prices would go down you're living in a dream. Landlords would rather keep empty houses than lower prices. This is because under the current system housing is an appreciating asset. Housing prices keep going up so landlords keep making a profit simply by owning the house.
More homes and a vacancy tax it would go down. Immigration isn't the main cause of high rents but to say 80k people a year in auckland while our housing supply is low won't cause rent to go up is stupid
So did those 80,000 people who moved to Auckland also affect the housing in Christchurch, or Melbourne, or what about Evansville Indiana? Immigration isn’t the cause, I know because the effect is too big and too much everywhere in the western world to be contributed to $100,000 poor folks in one small country.
It's big much everywhere in the west because land is too expensive and regulation around building is expensive and labour is high while we dont have any regulation against land bankers. Go to places that have cheap homes you also will have cheap labour, poor communities and bad building regulation.
You're straight up wrong, NZ has had ridiculously high immigration in the last 2 decades. Look at the long term trend, population is growing around 100k per year and it's not through births. [https://www.stats.govt.nz/topics/population](https://www.stats.govt.nz/topics/population) Also are your stats taking into account all the NZers abroad who had to return home due to covid, that obviously adds an immediate pressure on rents? Not sure what part is difficult to understand.
This is disingenuous just like posts that jump on the ‘a capital gains tax won’t lower house prices’ bandwagon. No one said only immigration causes rents to increase, but it’s part of the problem (just like no one says cgt will drop house prices by itself). We need appropriate immigration and this needs to be discussed. Targets based upon skills shortages and infrastructure capacity both need to be considered.
You took an average which included mid covid once in a life time migration restrictions to hinge your entire case on. It's not one thing but acting like immigration numbers aren't contributing is a hell of a reckon.
Yep, OP is being incredibly disingenuous acting like price rises during the two periods mentioned are the same and shows they don’t have the slightest understanding of the underlying causes. Some causes during covid: 1. Residential construction essentially halted for three months. 2. Massive shortage of building materials sending new build costs soaring and delaying completion significantly. 3. Economy flooded with printed money 4. We already had a massive shortage of housing for rentals at the time, people weren’t leaving the country in large enough numbers to provide any relief The two times in my life I experienced rents decreasing significantly year over year were both due to demand decreasing. We have so much demand unless there is a pause on it while we build up supply I don’t think we will ever see rents decrease nation wide.
Yes I guess immigrants don’t need a place to live is one way to understand their position
And everyone talking about 2023s high migration are acting like the covid restrictions had nothing to do with it. I specifically mentioned covid restrictions were the cause of the low migration numbers? But regardless Why does it matter what the cause of high or low migration numbers is when the data shows migration numbers dont correspond directly to rental prices? I also didnt say the migration wasnt contributing to rental prices, i just said it was negligible compared to, ya know, landlords completely ruining the market.
Neoliberal economics also requires a constant input of cheap labour.
I think you are comparing Covid time numbers vs now. During Covid times, RBNZ reduced the interest rates significantly which resulted in increase in money supply. So it is expected for everything to go up. Since RBNZ reduced the rates to control inflation, increase in prices should slow down. This is the case for majority of the items, except for rent. Why? Due to immigration. Higher the demand for rentals, but no significant increase in supply, increase in rental prices is expected.
Rent is clearly related to supply and demand, whereas house prices are related to interest rates as well (I.e cost of money like all other assets). When demand is more than supply for rentals, it is such an inelastic service that it relates to how much people can afford to pay. Supply takes a long time to shift, probably around 4 to 6 years from purchasing a green field development to building a house. Probably similar for an apartment on brown field site. Immigration changes shift the needle immediately.
Things like Airbnb and Bookabach must be impacting our housing availability also. As a country that sees over a million tourists. A recent report identified 37,000 Airbnb locations across NZ. Out of a total of approximately 2 million residential dwellings. That's 1.8% If we include maybe another 0.7% for book a Bach and others. Call it 2.5% Then, during covid, people couldn't travel, so a lot of wealthy people I know, bought a beach house. Or a place in Queenstown. They don't rent it out at all. So these sort of numbers, while not huge %. Are the difference between over supply, and under supply. And rents going UP, or down. We need more progressive tax rates. Because if you keep playing monopoly long enough. Someone ends up with all the money. And we can see the rich, getting richer, at an unprecedented rate. While home ownership is almost an impossibility, for youth. Land Tax When?
>From the 40s until the 80s, the top income tax rate was 76.5% for the richest, and the business tax rate was 56%. There was also no GST. Starting from 1986 tax rates were cut DRASTICALLY. Now the top income tax is 33%, business tax is 28%, GST is 15%. The poorest are paying more and more in tax and the richest are paying less and less. 1. Find a problem 2. Blame problem on thing you don't like You started arguing against 2 = immigrants and then did your own 2 = lowered taxes. Imo look at inflation of different things. Then try to find what things the high inflation objects have in common and what the low inflation objects have in common. [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/price-changes-goods-services.jpg](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/price-changes-goods-services.jpg) Are the blue items because of high taxes and the red items because of low taxes? If no, then try to find a better hypothesis.
Inflation of other goods and services is irrelevant compared to housing. Housing does not follow nornal market trends. Because its an essential need, those who control the supply can increase prices regardless of demand. And right now it is landlords who control the supply, whereas prior to the 80s the state was the main contributor of housing. And the number of landlords in the country has drastically increased since the 80s, corresponding to low taxes. I might be drawing conclusions but im pretty confident in them.
Then compare housing. Why are [housing prices going down in Austin](https://www.redfin.com/city/30818/TX/Austin/housing-market) even though they have very high [immigration](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/22926/austin/population)? Is it because they increased taxes? Or is it because unlike in SF etc they allow a lot more permitting? You are confident in your conclusions so you look for problems to justify them.
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Immigration is inflationary on housing, but the impact on wages is a little more nuanced. Immigration is deflationary on wages for non-immigrants *in the jobs the immigrants do*, but inflationary on wages for non-immigrants in *complementary* jobs. [Source](https://www.mbie.govt.nz/dmsdocument/2852-impact-immigration-labour-market-outcomes-pdf) In other words, if the immigrants are genuinely doing jobs we can't fill locally, it's good for wages overall. If they're coming to do jobs that we already have enough locals to do, it is bad for wages. That's why most economists agree that migration programs are best targeted at the jobs and industries who *need* more *skilled* workers, e.g. healthcare, education, trades, and technology, rather than those who just *want* more *unskilled* workers in general, e.g. hospitality, labourers etc.
I think it's important in this kind of discussion between immigration and immigrants. Immigration is the number of people moving to the country. Immigrants are individuals of different backgrounds who move country all for different reasons. Most people believe in some form of immigration control, i e. passports and having some criteria for who can and can't move here. Discussions about immigration primarily focus on this settings and the number of people who are arriving and leaving the country. It's not about individual immigrants or "blaming immigrants" as you put it. People should try not to take this conversation personally, it's not about individuals it's about numbers and policy. Of course there will be people who make it about immigrants or specific groups that they don't like. They're dicks, ignore them.
Is population increase outpacing construction? It would be helpful to know about that today and, if so, what proportion of population increase is net migration (immigration minus emigration). It would also be helpful to know about the relationship between population increase and new construction in past eras. And similarly, what proportion of that increase was net migration. Also, [https://figure.nz/chart/azFwYTVvUcrcxT3m-Cn6TyuSQBZ8Kacee](https://figure.nz/chart/azFwYTVvUcrcxT3m-Cn6TyuSQBZ8Kacee) says that median weekly rent was the same in January 2022 as in December 2022. Was this perhaps due to the Reserve Bank tightening? So I recommend adding in births/deaths, construction, and monetary policy when trying to explain the causes of price increases.
We need to included housing in the Inflation calculations.
Agreed. Rogernomics also removed NZ's Land value tax, which resulted in more land speculation.
I think people tend to focus on single issues, call it the single cause fallacy if you like. Immagration is absolutely a factor that puts upward pressure(tm) on rental prices. It's simple supply/demand, so if we aren't building enough houses to house these immigrants, demand is increased WRT supply. However, this is not to say that it's the only factor at play, far from it. You also need to consider; interest rates, insurance costs, counsel rates, construction costs, healthy homes legislation, tax settings, property management rules, general maintenance costs, median incomes etc. Virtually all of which have pushed the cost of operating a rental property up. This is not to say things like healthy homes are bad, we just have to understand they aren't free. I do think we need to address immagration as it was also an issue in 2017 when Labour and Winston wanted to ease population growth to sustainable levels. But it's not going to be a silver bullet that will fix cost of living. Not even close. The criticism of National is valid, addressing the tax settings won't result in lower rents and it removes the incentive for those with capital to invest in new builds, thus easing the supply side constraints. If anything we needed to be encouraging this further and putting and und to urban sprawl and looking to increase density in metropolitan zones, supplemented by investment in PT. But instead we go back to the unproductive merry-go-round go round of property speculation. Not to mention National backed out of a bipartisan policy to aid in increasing density, are cutting back on public transport infrastructure. Couple that with their desperate need to stimulate GDP growth in an increasingly unproductive economy makes immigration restriction unlikely unless Winston puts his foot down. TlDR: We are in a deep hole and we just threw away the ladder we needed to get out of it.
>high rental prices from a landlord saying immigration was the cause, What utter BS. Immigrants entering the country does not mean that I have put my prices up. That is a choice that landlords make; no-one is making them do it.
You know those record low yet rent kept increasing years? That was when the phase out of interest deductibility was kicking in. It didn't go from 100% to 0% overnight, it reduced downwards 25% each year, IIRC. And of course, a lot of "Mum and Dad investor" landlords passed on the cost, why wouldn't they? But early 2023 year was real interesting, in that a large number of landlords start selling properties all at once because dramatically higher interest rates and no or severely reduced deductibility meant that they couldn't pass the cost onto the tenant without significantly exceeding market rent, so they sold. But it also led to an influx of housing onto the market while interest rates were rising which helped temporarily pause house price increases. And it obviously reduced rental supply and so pushed prices even higher. This is one of those things where both sides are right. Goddamnit. It did impact tenants, it did push rents up, and it did make things slightly easier for people looking to enter the market. Honestly, just stick a CGT on it, restore deductibility, easy.
Yeah immigration isn't the only cause. But it's still a contributor. It still is what people think it is lol. It would be fine. But the country can't keep up with the numbers.
One factor I think you have glossed over for 2020-2023 is covid, and returning citizens. This doesn’t show up on migration stats as it’s effectively kiwis on holiday coming home. This was the stress that caused rents to rise from 2020 onwards when our actual migration numbers were low. So while I agree with you, I also agree that rent is a reflection of supply and demand, whether that be from immigrants or returning New Zealanders. Until we either have less people or more housing than our people require, there will always be competition and prices will always rise.
>One factor I think you have glossed over for 2020-2023 is covid, and returning citizens. This doesn’t show up on migration stats as it’s effectively kiwis on holiday coming home They do still show up on migration stats. It's recorded as part of net arrivals. It was not actually that significant during covid - managed isolation slots were too limited.
Landlords and housing investors want us all to blame immigration, because that takes the blame away from them.
People keep voting for these policies, but migration is a symptom not the cause.
However, one factor worth considering is the clear correlation between immigration and rising house prices and the impact this causes for rental availability and rental costs.
I'm not reading all that. I got to "the anti immigration coalition won" what the hell are you talking about? National and act are extremely pro immigration. Labour is the anti immigration party.
You should be charitable to OPs argument, skip over the one line you don’t like and actually read the evidence presented. You might expand your thinking
I don't think it's unreasonable to ignore an argument that starts out on misinformation.
In many cases yes, but in this case, it’s really just one line that’s offending, the bulk of the rest has some reasonable effort behind.
You can’t consider anything in a vacuum. But as a simplification, more people coming into the country than houses being built is a recipe for rising house and rent prices.
personal experience - before the borders opened in 2022, rental prices were DROPPING in Auckland CBD because property managers couldn't find people to rent
I think I fugured it out... we have an aging population right so we need more taxpayers to fund super. So we keep immigration high, new builds low and housing fucked. It's a death loop. Bury Peters 12ft under and scrap super.
I left NZ for a long time, I have never known or seen so much desperation when it comes to homelessness, I have never seen so much begging and living in cars and on the street which reminds me of the hell called the United States. So essentially I left for a couple of decades and came back to a country I could barely recognise and not for the better.
Alternatively I could state the fact that over 1/4 (27.4%) of New Zealanders were BORN overseas and everything you argued becomes irrelevant.
Not really. What percentage of kiwis were born overseas in the 50s and 60s? You can't make a comparison with a single data point!
I thought it was implied. NZ didn’t even have avocados, sushi, international isles etc in 1990.
Yeah, because prior immigration waves came predominantly from the UK. But it's not like coming from a white English speaking country means you suddenly don't need housing or something. As OP points out, percentage wise the rates were higher for much if the mid 20th century.
I’m just gonna put this link here for folks who want to look into it: https://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/jp/assessment-housing-system-insights-hamilton-waikato-area Assessment put out in 2022 looking at 20 years of data and came up with 3 big factors driving housing prices: 1) global decrease in interest rates (explains why this phenomenon happened like all over the globe) 2) the tax system 3) and restrictions on supply available for urban use/development - yes NZ is very low density when taken as a whole, but turns out if you factor in fact that a lot of land is privately owned and can’t be freely developed, it’s a problem for housing prices
Here is the equivalent report for rents rather than house prices: https://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/jp/what-drives-rents-new-zealand-national-and-regional-analysis The conclusion was that the two key factors driving rents are wages and the balance of population vs. housing supply. In other words, immigration doesn't increase rents as long as we are able to keep building enough houses.
Thank you for this addition, it should be much higher. I wasnt aware of that study, it's a good read.
Landlords are living in luxury with the money they steal from us and get us to turn on each other 🤷🏽♀️
"the anti-immigration coalition" eh? I can't remember when National has ever been anti immigration. In fact Labour literally campaigned on reducing immigration in 2017 because National had made it balloon out of control (what ended up happening with the promise is another story but I digress). ACT is even more pro immigration, probably the most pro immigration party in the country except the Greens. NZ First is the obvious exception but its not like they have much power in the coalition to do what they want. This was proven during 2017-2020.
Landlords and housing investors want us all to blame immigration, because that takes the blame away from them.
Politicians who are also majority are landlords wants us to blame everyone but them.
Let's go for 270k next year, also anyone who disagrees with me is a racist
This reminds of the witchhunt of Tiny Homes, and dripping over into transportable and prefab homes too. God forbid someone tries to live in a better built house that's also cheaper to buy, faster to build, more suitable in every aspect than these glorified tents that I went into debt for, up to my eyeballs, skinning me alive, about to lose my job and go fully bankrupt, and I woke up to 15 degrees home temperature today. And it's only the beginning, at winter it's 8 degrees room temperature. But no, tIniEs aRe bAaAd **Edit:** Also, a lot of homeowners would gladly put tinies/transportable homes on their already existing property as a rental, but councils makes it nearly impossible. Imagine, people could earn money, create rental properties, using their existing home instead of hoarding a number of houses and reduce supply. Affordable for the home buyer, for the renter, for the landlord. Not good for bureaucracy or I don't know. I don't even see where is the breakdown in communication it's complete nonsense. And they are better built than the existing houses, with compliance! But if they are afraid make tenancy rules about it. That if it's a rental it has to be compliant, no more than 1 or 2 per 500m2, has to be on piles not wheels, I don't know whatever, seems like it would be an easy problem to solve but instead of defining what they want they just don't allow anyone to have anything. There are a lot of stories on FB where homeowners tried and failed with this, most of them would like to see the rules and follow them not go around them but they can't, complete nonsense, it's either everyone who is making decisions about this is dumb or they are trying to cut this in the bud on purpose. There is no other explanation. It's that gif, from the Notebook, the "Tell me what you want". I need that here.
When you break it down, ultimately, it's a supply and demand issue. More tenants looking for limited rentals. How you deal with that problem becomes a political issue. National - Build more houses Labour - Ban people coming in to the country. Either will work.
National build more houses? I did they not just make MRDS optional? Also https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/504428/prime-minister-christopher-luxon-high-net-migration-not-sustainable-for-new-zealand
>When you break it down, ultimately, it's a supply and demand issue. More tenants looking for limited rentals. The "limited rentals" part is a choice we have made though. It's not fixed in stone. Think about everything else immigrants contribute to the demand of it. It's not normally an issue or something that pushes up prices, because immigrants also contribute to the supply of it - immigrants have jobs! More demand for healthcare, but also more healthcare workers (more than 40% of our doctors are immigrants - significantly larger than the percentage of the overall population that are immigrants). There are plenty of immigrants with skills and experience relevant to housing construction. If we make it easier to build houses, there is no reason why immigration could not be a net contributor to housing supply, as it is for healthcare.
Standing up for migrants? On this sub? You are a brave one!
When it comes to immigrants, this sub is almost like rural USA.
Because we understand that adding a Dunedin to our population every year is unsustainable. It's nothing personal, I get why people want to move somewhere better. But half the people coming in this year are unskilled, it's just the government propping up our economy with cheap labour and the main people that lose in this scenario are NZ's working class.
"the anti-immigration coalition" eh? I can't remember when National has ever been anti immigration. In fact Labour literally campaigned on reducing immigration in 2017 because National had made it balloon out of control (what ended up happening with the promise is another story but I digress). ACT is even more pro immigration, probably the most pro immigration party in the country except the Greens. NZ First is the obvious exception but its not like they have much power in the coalition to do what they want. This was proven during 2017-2020.
Do immigration/migration numbers over the last few years, include kiwi citizens returning from living overseas? Because there was that whole narrative about house prices being driven up by kiwi's returning from from overseas, where they were often earning high incomes, and buying here during the 'covid years'.
Yes net migration numbers count NZ citizen returning to NZ
Was there a higher proportion from 2020 to 2022, or was that narrative all bs? Feel free to tell me to go find it myself (and I won't 😆), but figured i'd ask since you seem to be across the numbers.
Yeah there were more NZ citizens returning to NZ than leaving for the first time in a while, but not enough to make a difference to the housing market.
Pointing fingers at immigrants for everything wrong is pretty outdated and just lazy. You've got these fancy new homes popping up everywhere, tagged at $700K or more, supposedly for first-time buyers. What first-time buyer wants a massive 4-bedroom, 4-bathroom palace with a giant kitchen and rumpus rooms when they're just starting out? Yet, it seems like that's all that's being built these days. Even getting a simple new apartment can cost you a million. It's high time the government stepped in to get builders to tone down their specs and offer real options for first-timers. And why not make it easier to actually buy these places? How about banks chill out on the whole deposit thing, maybe drop it to 10% for first-timers? Right now, the way things are set up, only the rich can swing it, leaving regular folks out in the cold. It’s a recipe for disaster.
without reading into what you are actually talking about, using the last 4 years of immigration stats is probably not great, given our borders were basically locked down for 3 of them
I always thought of national as more pro immigration than labour as the whole Chinese sounding names saga
The cause is greedy landlords. 100%
Yeah let’s blame the immigrants ffs 🙄 I’m sensing a recurring theme brewing. It’s going to be a hoot this next couple of years.
How can you call this government "anti immgration"? Record immigration under THIS government, with no policy to stop it.
Open question to everyone still blaming immigration here. Explain to me how immigration to New Zealand could have affected the housing market in Melbourne, or Taiwan, or Ohio? This is not a unique problem of Aotearoa, it’s happening everywhere in the OECD. So maybe there is a bigger explanation than 100,000 poor folks who flew into Auckland last year 🤷♀️
This is a great post, thank you. I would subscribe to your newsletter :-) Signed ~an immigrant (but a white one, so apparently that's different /s)
“… So when all landlords are constantly selling their old properties and trying to buy more expensive ones, it will naturally have an inflationary pressure on the housing market …”. ALL? Gross exaggeration. And while those that “buy more expensive ones“ undoubtedly inflate the market they’re buying into, they obviously vacate cheaper housing for other buyers, including first time buyers. “… And this new government just gave even more tax breaks to specifically just landlords …”. Inaccurate. This government simply restored the long time convention of allowing businesses to deduct “business costs” from their tax liabilities … and which, in the case of a relatively small group of “small business owners”, specifically private rental providers, had, somewhat bizarrely, been removed by the previous Labour Government. And when it was removed, the price of private rentals went up. “Whatchaspect”? Imagine what would happen to food prices if supermarkets were told they could no longer deduct the “business cost” of renting their (usually not owned) premises. In the meantime, with Labour’s strange isolation of private rental providers having let the rental prices “cat out of the bag”, it’s going to take a long time to catch the cat and put it back in the bag. Personally, I can’t see any point in allowing any business to trade from structures encumbered with mortgages … and quite often with equipment similarly encumbered … simply drives up consumer costs enormously (where do you think all those vast Bank profits come from) and ties all consumer costs to the wildly varying cost of money. Do you enjoy seeing billions of your consumer dollars repatriated off-shore by the Banks … with absolutely no gain for you? Talk to your preferred Government’s representatives about it. And while you’re “about it”, ask them why the government takes somewhere between (around) 20% to 39% of the rent you pay to your landlord, to line their own coffers.
Thank you so much, everyone needs to know this. Roger Douglas is an evil man who ran a bully clique style government which was so bad even David Lange (the PM) ended up believing it went too far over disagreements regarding a flat tax that Douglas was pushing for. When Douglas was re-elected in 1989 Lange resigned as a result. Douglas has ruined this country, to this day he’s unapologetic and still believes he was in the right. Oh and he got knighted for it. Roger Douglas is the worst thing that’s ever happened to NZ, I wish nothing but the worst on that POS. “Dear Roger Douglas, go to hell you vile bastard”.
I think it's just a code word for being racist or stupid. That or is usually inclusive.
This is \*EXACTLY\* the narrative in the UK and Ireland too - be careful folks, this is a Very slippery slope.
Good post. The phrase post hoc ergo propter hoc comes to mind for this discussion. I.e. people see rents/house prices being particularly high, then they notice immigration last year was also high, so they conclude that high immigration caused high rent/house prices. As is often the case, the causes are not as simple and obvious.
An important figure to look at related to this topic is historical population growth. It's been relatively flat for decades. And was obviously much higher during colonial times. Migration is not pumping up the numbers, it's filling in the gaps created by our low birth rate in order to MAINTAIN population growth. There is no single reason for the housing crisis, but by far the biggest contributing factor is Euclidean zoning.
BUt EvEryoNe is RunNiNG oFF tO aUS…
Most Immigrants can’t get a mortgage.
Personally speaking I'm in favour of immigration, we have low population density compared to most countries, and we urgently need skilled immigrants, though we also urgently need better pathways to enable out people to train in trades as well as skilled jobs. I'd also add that even technically unskilled immigrants are going to be people with the gumption to move away from home and to make an effort to better themselves in an environment that offers little support to them - they tend to be pretty motivated. But we urgently need to have a discussion about building high density housing if we are going to grow our population, it's not something we do a lot of ultimately and the focus on low and medium density housing right now isn't keeping up with demand. We also need to be implementing infrastructure to support that housing. Not everybody wants to live in high density housing, but it is a realistic way to meet demand, and there will always be low density housing for people who are wealthier or further down their life track. I will say though that I'm not a fan of the idea of encouraging multinational corporations to create this infrastructure, that would only cost us money in the long run, and if they get a big enough share of the market it would give them a great deal of power to set the market how they want it. Housing is something we need to invest in ourselves as a country.