It's been well canvassed this year, Auckland house prices are out of control while the rest of the country wallows.

Personal experience has brought that harsh reality into sharp focus. Try selling a house in the capital, a city with few of the problems that Auckland has, particularly when it comes to commuting, and it's an uphill struggle.

In the CBD you can walk from one side of Wellington to the other in about half an hour and you can drive it in ten minutes.

But selling a house with five bedrooms, three bathrooms, two lounges, a formal dining room, an office, a wine cellar, and extensive decking with a spa pool ten minutes out of the city centre took six months with the price fetched fifty-grand under its official valuation. The same home in Auckland in a similar location would be snapped up with the valuation buried somewhere in the price.

So try buying in an inner Auckland suburb, that's if you can get an estate agent interested enough to show you through one outside of open homes, and you'll find a million bucks gets you a couple of bedrooms, one bathroom, a small lounge and kitchen on a pocket of land.

Interest rates might be the lowest they've been in fifty years but houses are the most expensive they've ever been, putting them in our biggest city well out of reach for those wanting to get on to the property ladder. They don't even make it to the first rung with the city now being in the top ten most expensive places to buy in the world.

So Labour's man who wants to keep the existing mortar between the bricks for those who want to realise the Kiwi home ownership dream reckons he's got a solution. Phil Twyford's had a bill drawn from the ballot banning foreign buyers from buying existing homes, forcing them to buy land and build instead.

Public opinion would seem to be on his side, with an opinion poll in July showing 61 percent favour a ban on foreigners buying existing homes if they don't live here, with even a majority of Tory voters giving it their backing.

But the Beehive's not listening. For starters, there's no data on foreign buyers, which in itself is a disgrace given that the housing market's been on fire for several years now.

And if Twyford's tweaking's successful, which it won't be, forcing foreigners to buy land to build will simply shift the inflation focus.

Across the ditch they've got a ban in place and house price inflation's still running at 19 percent in Sydney. But given our relations with Australia at the moment, let them crash and burn so that we can pick through the ashes and learn from their mistakes!