A housing development that once again shows how reality beats theory.
Housing is a New Zealand obsession. We love housing and we long to own housing.
It encroaches on immigration and whether too many people lead to higher prices.
It encroaches on politics and the expectation as to what Governments do about housing and the prices of said housing.
It involves social housing, emergency housing, KiwiSaver, incomes, the Reserve Bank, deposits and LVR's. It is all encompassing.
In theory, if you could make building cheaper, we would be keen, wouldn’t we? Yes, I hear you say.
So what happened to Clever Core?
Clever Core is Fletcher's prefab house building factory.
The factory is closing.
Why, I hear you ask? Because, to quote Fletchers, "it had not worked".
Demand was the issue because there wasn’t enough of it.
If you had conducted a survey and asked, "could prefab housing help the so-called housing crisis in this country?" you would have got an overwhelming yes.
Yet, did we follow our enthusiasm up with sales? Obviously not.
Resistance from the building industry is another phrase Fletchers used.
You see, as I have said many times, we are happy to moan about the cost of building, the cost of GIB, how cheap it is in Australia and how much a deck out back for the BBQ would be. But prefab? Oh, no thank you.
Essentially, we are hosing snobs. It's sort of like with coffee - we moan about $6 for a flat white but pay it anyway.
Not that there is anything wrong with that. If you want to pay anywhere between $10,000-35,000 per square metre that’s great.
But what Clever Core reveals is we don’t actually want to save. Often, we don’t actually want solutions.
What we want is what we have, and like, except at a better price. We want what we can't have.
What we can have, we don’t want.
Ask Fletchers.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
It encroaches on politics and the expectation as to what Governments do about housing and the prices of said housing.
It involves social housing, emergency housing, KiwiSaver, incomes, the Reserve Bank, deposits and LVR's. It is all encompassing.
In theory, if you could make building cheaper, we would be keen, wouldn’t we? Yes, I hear you say.
So what happened to Clever Core?
Clever Core is Fletcher's prefab house building factory.
The factory is closing.
Why, I hear you ask? Because, to quote Fletchers, "it had not worked".
Demand was the issue because there wasn’t enough of it.
If you had conducted a survey and asked, "could prefab housing help the so-called housing crisis in this country?" you would have got an overwhelming yes.
Yet, did we follow our enthusiasm up with sales? Obviously not.
Resistance from the building industry is another phrase Fletchers used.
You see, as I have said many times, we are happy to moan about the cost of building, the cost of GIB, how cheap it is in Australia and how much a deck out back for the BBQ would be. But prefab? Oh, no thank you.
Essentially, we are hosing snobs. It's sort of like with coffee - we moan about $6 for a flat white but pay it anyway.
Not that there is anything wrong with that. If you want to pay anywhere between $10,000-35,000 per square metre that’s great.
But what Clever Core reveals is we don’t actually want to save. Often, we don’t actually want solutions.
What we want is what we have, and like, except at a better price. We want what we can't have.
What we can have, we don’t want.
Ask Fletchers.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
3 comments:
The concept of kitset housing wasn't new , maybe to Meaghan Woods. in 2019 Lockwood and similar solid timber houses have been around for decades as have pre cut standard fames etc delivered on site . Fletchers corporate model just wasnt competitive again in a skilled industry. Nothing more , nothing less.
Few deign to live in a prefab when a fancy modern state apartment is on offer. And with the amount of maney now directed to maori probably far too small and austere for maori land housing
In economic terms "snobbery" translates as demand.
There is nothing wrong with NZ consumers preference for quality.
If Fletchers made the gamble on a prefab house building factory but the market demand was not there, then so be it.
That is how the free market works.
Why would you expect a similar result between reality and an imaginary survey when there is no exchange of money?
What is rarely mentioned is the housing stock in NZ has changed dramatically in the last few decades.
Hardware retailers have made fortunes with the renovation trend.
Our houses got bigger by basically an extra bedroom and a bathroom.
And perhaps this suits the mentality of the newer generation of kiwis who'd rather moan about affordability and stay in bed rather than try to do something about improving their situation?
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