Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Does Chris Bishop have a point about house prices?

I'll tell you what I found interesting over the last few days it's the enormous surprise at the start, and now the debate about Chris Bishop saying it's a good thing that house prices are falling.

He was asked about this on Friday and he said, yes, it's a good thing and that we've got to decouple the idea that the New Zealand economy is driven by house prices - labelling it 'artificial wealth'.

Greg Ninness: QV says average housing values declined by just 0.3% last year....

QV says average housing values declined by just 0.3% last year with prices remaining 'relatively static'

Quotable Value (QV) says house prices were "relatively static" last year and are likely to stay that way as the market heads into 2025.

Brian Easton: Flooding Housing Policy

The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.

Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the announced strategy is going to quickly resolve New Zealand’s housing problems.

Dr Don Brash: Perhaps house prices don't always go up

There was a rather revealing headline in the Herald on Sunday today (12 May). It read

“One in 8 Auckland homes on market were bought during boom, may now sell for loss”.

The first line of text noted that “New data shows one in every eight Auckland homes going on sale is at risk of selling for a loss or minimal profit”.

Don Brash: Who's to blame for our still ridiculous house prices?

Over the last year or so, house prices in most parts of New Zealand have come back a bit, probably as a result of the relatively rapid rise in mortgage interest rates. But relative to incomes, New Zealand house prices are still outrageously expensive. It’s absurdly excessive house prices which explain why, when Credit Suisse published their global wealth report in 2021, New Zealanders were listed as the third wealthiest people on the planet – with the great bulk of that “wealth” being in the form of over-priced houses.

Don Brash: House prices are still outrageous - blame your local council and the Greens

A few days ago, I spoke in the Public Forum part of a Western Bay of Plenty District Council meeting. For me, this was a first – I had never spoken at a local body council meeting before. What prompted my short speech was seeing some absolutely outrageous data on house prices in Tauranga and the Western Bay of Plenty.

In Tauranga, according to Smart Growth – the body charged by the Tauranga City Council and the Western Bay of Plenty District Council with planning housing development in the Tauranga region – the median house price is almost 12 times the median household income; and in the Western Bay of Plenty, the median house prices is more than eight times the median household income.

Don Brash: House prices - Where to from here?

Three months ago, financial media company Bloomberg looked at housing markets in 30 countries and concluded that the New Zealand housing market was the one at greatest risk of a sharp decline based on the relationship of house prices to rent, house prices to household income and the growth of house prices over the preceding decades.

And that should not have been a surprise to anybody who has been following the housing market in New Zealand in recent years. As long ago as 2008, when John Key was Leader of the Opposition, he pointed out that the median price of Auckland houses was already six times the median household income in Auckland, compared with the three times median income traditionally characteristic of affordable housing markets. By 2017 when the National Party lost office, the median house price in Auckland was nine times the median household income. And by last November, with a Labour Government in office, it was over 11 times, and that despite promises to create a more affordable housing market and, among other things, build an additional 100,000 houses over a decade.

Don Brash: The serious challenges facing local government

An address to the Omokoroa Residents & Ratepayers Association AGM

29 June 2022

Ladies and gentlemen,

There are a great many serious challenges facing New Zealand at the present time but most of them – like our falling literacy rates, like the prospect of a very serious increase in government debt over the next few decades as a result of the ageing of our population and the failure of either National-led or Labour-led Governments to do anything about it, like our depressingly slow rate of productivity growth compared with other countries, like our shocking levels of welfare dependency – lie well outside the scope of local government, and should remain outside that scope. These are problems which only central government can effectively deal with.

Don Brash: House prices falling at last?

In recent weeks, more and more commentators are suggesting that house prices in New Zealand have started to fall, and are expected to fall further.

For many homeowners, especially those who have bought within the last year or two, this news will be terrifying, and for them I have a great deal of sympathy. They were sold the lie that house prices would always and everywhere rise much faster than incomes, and that therefore the best way to financial independence was to borrow to the maximum extent possible and buy a house – better still, several houses, the more the better.

The lie was aggressively promoted by the mainstream media, with constant references to the importance of “getting on the property ladder”, the implication being that once on “the ladder”, you would be carried onward and upward indefinitely.