I had the nasty realisation yesterday that the chances of my boys moving out of my house in the medium term are virtually nil.

QV has announced that the average house price in Auckland is $786,000. to buy that under LVR rules you'd need a minimum $157,000 of capital. My son Jack is 19. He's at Uni. He’s not going to find that sort of money anytime soon soon.

The Auckland prices have gone up 14% in a year. Nearly 20% in less fashionable suburbs in the South that used to house poorer people. Places like Otahuhu and Blockhouse Bay are nearing a million. House prices have gone up 7.7% nationally. Has your salary gone up in that time. If you don't own property already it becomes exponentially harder every minute.

And this won't end any time soon. 50,000 immigrants arrive every year and almost all choose to live in Auckland. 6000 new houses have been built in Auckland. That's not going to work. Auckland has grown by the size of Napier in the past 2 years. Just stop and think about that for a moment.

And with this population growth, pressure also comes on to rentals. So again when will my boy, laden down with his student loan, be able to have enough money to make his own life under his own roof.

But let's wait a minute that's if he wants to stay in Auckland. I'd love him to stay in the same town as me but maybe he should move to another town. Many beautiful places with good homes remain affordable in New Zealand. I've lived in Wanganui, Hamilton, Wellington and Greymouth so I know life is fine outside the cities. So maybe I should throw him out and say go find a job in Hastings or wherever. The question there is "Are there any jobs there?". Well in some regions there are but in many there aren't.

If there's one thing the Northland by-election pointed out it's that successive government's have been concentrating on Auckland and Christchurch, and the remaining regions remain unloved and undeveloped but at least there are houses. But there's no point in having houses if you don't have jobs.

So what to do? National has launched it's Homestart policy this week but faced with figures like this it's like throwing a snowball at a forest fire. The whole housing crisis is far more holistic than a $200 million loan scheme. The housing crisis is one symptom of a lack of long term planning. So what do you think we need to do now?

Immigration needs to be controlled more until we have the houses for them, unless they want to live in the regions. The regions need to be developed more with incentives for businesses to be based in them so people will want to live in them. Houses need to be built for families in Auckland. High density low cost housing has to be built as well for those starting out like my son. Maybe rent prices need to be controlled until there's more supply.

But none of this is happening because our country is divided into 2 generations. Those with houses and those without. But the ones with houses are feeling rich and buying a new car every second year and they can't see what all the fuss is about.

But to all those with houses I have one thing to say. Who will buy your house if we leave a generation behind? And the sooner we solve this problem the sooner my sons will move out. And that’s a good thing.