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Government needs to act quickly to fix housing market

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Mon, 21 Jan 2019, 6:22PM

Government needs to act quickly to fix housing market

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Mon, 21 Jan 2019, 6:22PM

The housing market in New Zealand is becoming less affordable across the whole country.

A housing affordability study by Demographia International shows unaffordable housing is spreading to smaller centres in New Zealand.

It is the second most unaffordable housing market in the world.

Co-author Hugh Pavletich told Mike Yardley housing needs to cost about three-times the household income.

However, more New Zealand centres are reaching median prices more than six times the household income.

Pavletich says unaffordable housing creates all sorts of problems, and access to it is a human right.

"It's been just progressively getting worse."

He says that it will likely come as a shock to the Labour Government to see the extent of the crisis.

Pavletich says that Australia prices are becoming more affordable, which he expects will force the Ardern Government to do more on the issue.

"I was very disappointed with their performance in 2018 when we were expecting them to be very active in dealing with these structural issues."

He says that KiwiBuild needs to be revamped rather than scrapped, but that the Government can't carry on down the current path.

Pavletich says that the smaller centres are becoming "absolutely overwhelmed".

"For a place like Dunedin to be sitting at six times the household income is just absurd".

He says both Tauranga and Auckland need to get on with fixing their land supply issues and infrastructure financing, both problems they've known about for years.

"Local council is where it should be solved, because these are all local issues, so it's about time all the playtime planning stopped and they got on and actually sorted the problem."

LISTEN TO HUGH PAVLETICH TALK WITH MIKE YARDLEY ABOVE 

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