HOUSING MARKET A REGULATORY DISASTER

“With Auckland’s housing market becoming an international sensation following the sale of a former state house hovel in Devonport for over $1 million, young people and low-income families are paying the price for the Council’s regulatory disaster,” says Affordable Auckland Mayoral and Albany candidate Stephen Berry.

“Nosey NIMBY’s, heritage preservation and zone rigidity are all contributors to the insane hyper-inflation that has afflicted Auckland’s housing market. Resource consent costs averaging fifteen to thirty thousand dollars per site don’t help. However the biggest elephant in the room, which the left wing council refuses to recognise is that their own policies are causing an artificial land shortage, sending values skyrocketing.”

Mr. Berry refuses to accept the usual scapegoat of foreign speculation as the cause of Auckland’s heated house market. “Speculation is just a symptom of our problems, not the cause. In order to slow price inflation the city needs to abolish the urban boundary and allow the city to spread out as well as intensifying.”

“High school economics textbooks are not the only place you can find the basic economic laws which demonstrate price inflation when supply is artificially prevented from meeting demand. A 2010 report from the Productivity Commission report was also able to illustrate this consequence when it showed land 2km inside the urban limit is eight times the price of land 2km outside of it.”

“Centrally planning special zones where consents processes are streamlined is not going to make the slightest dent in prices and the fact only 102 houses have been built out of 30,000 planned proves this. The Council needs to remove the regulatory distortions it has created to allow the market to begin behaving in a healthy manner. Centrally planned growth must be replaced by organic growth respecting private property rights. The consequences of not doing so will be catastrophic.”

ENDS

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