Demand for planning change

News that Auckland is now ranked as the fourth least affordable housing market in the annual Demographia survey, and that home ownership in New Zealand is at its lowest level since 1951, has prompted renewed focus on the issue.

The New Zealand Institute executive director Oliver Hartwich, who wrote the foreword to this year’s Demographia survey, described the situation as “an unaffordability disaster”.

He said New Zealand needs to look to countries like Germany where more houses are built, largely because of the way local government is funded and incentivised.

The view of German local government is that providing more houses attracts more ratepayers which generates more revenue which helps to fund infrastructure.

Hartwich said that, for this reason, they are more eager to zone land for development and speed up planning processes and have, therefore, kept housing supply flexible enough to keep up with demand.