No immediate answers from Housing Stocktake

“The NZPIF agrees with the authors of the Housing Stocktake released today that private rental housing will continue to feature prominently in our future housing landscape”, says Andrew King, Executive Officer.

“The Housing Stocktake does not have any new information, but it is interesting to have it in one place,” he says.

However there are some questionable arguments raised in the report. It states that renting has become less affordable since the 1980s, yet rental costs as a percentage of incomes has reduced from 42% in 1985 to 32% in 2015.

A graph from the report also shows that wage growth has mostly been ahead of rental price growth since 2008 and it is only in the last few years that rental price growth has exceeded wage growth.

“The key reasons we are seeing the fall in availability over the past few years is that providing rental property has become progressively more difficult over that time,” says King.

Increased regulation, higher costs, larger deposit requirements and a generally negative attitude towards the people who provide homes for tenants has led to some landlords exiting the industry. This leads to reduced availability of homes for tenants and to higher rental prices as demand exceeds supply.

Even without new regulations and cost increases, it is difficult to see how the required increase in rental property supply will be achieved.
ENDS

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