Just increase the supply of land. Extending the capital gains tax and banning foreigners from buying land will do no good. An average house price 10 times the average income in Auckland is not a demand-side problem.
There are plenty of examples of US cities with different land supply restrictions but common national surges in demand for housing such as prior to the GFC. Cities with liberal land supply experienced only small increases in house prices.
The Greens should follow ACT and the Labour Party in calling for the abolition of the Auckland urban limit and changes in council finances so they can fund the necessary infrastructure quickly.
Morgan Foundation wants the National party-led government to take on NIMBYs not only with more high-rises and urban intensification but congestion charges too! There is only so much courage you can expect in one term of government. Relaxing the Auckland urban limit, which will hopefully cause housing prices to stop rising in Auckland was not enough.
No softly softly catchy monkey here. No concept of winning the battles you can win.
New Zealand housing prices were pretty flat up for the two decades until the passage of the Resource Management Act (RMA) in 1993. They then soared well before any foreign buyers such as from China entered the market.
Most of the housing price rises were under the watch of a Labour Government – a party which is supposed to look out for working families.
The failure of the Labour Party to nip the problem in the bud when they had a working majority in Parliament means future solutions run into the political problem that any significant increase in supply of land may push many with recent mortgages such as in Auckland into negative equity.
Since they left office in 2008, leaving land supply regulation in a mess, the approach of Labour has been political opportunism rather than supporting RMA reform.
Labour recently admitted the need to increase the supply of land, but have not put forward practical ideas to increase the supply of land.
The National Party is not much better in terms of real solutions to regulatory constraints on the supply of land.
The Labour Party and the Greens both plan to build 100,000 affordable houses as a way of offsetting soaring housing prices in Auckland and other New Zealand cities. These plans were announced in the 2014 Election in New Zealand.
A trite but insurmountable objection to the proposal to build 100,000 affordable houses is there are no plans to increase the supply of land. That would require RMA reform which both Labour and the Greens oppose. They oppose RMA reform partly for ideological reasons and partly to cultivate middle-class home owner votes.
Unless there is an increase in the supply of land in Auckland and the other New Zealand cities, the government under the plans of the Labour Party and the Greens are building houses the private sector would have built anyway but for the government bought from the same new supply of land released every year by local councils.
The proposals of Labour and the Green to build affordable houses simply changes the identity of who builds the same number of new houses in New Zealand. There is no net increase in this supply of houses so there will not be any improvement in housing affordability.
If the supply of land were to be increased through RMA reforms, there be no need to for the government to build the houses. This is because the market will take care of building the houses on the additional land released by local councils if there is a demand for them and they’re obviously is.
Attempts by a Labour and Green Government to build affordable houses is no more than displace the efforts of private developers to supply houses but in configurations more closely aligned with market demand in terms of the quality and size of the house.
Another insurmountable but still minor objection to supplying 100,000 affordable houses is Friedman’s second law of economics: you can’t give anything away for free because people will queue up for access.
If the government is selling cheap houses to ordinary families, people change that circumstances to make themselves more eligible for the house, which presumably will be targeted by income. Easiest way to do that is to fund a low income family member such as a student to buy the house and sell it to you. Alternatively, you could make an advanced of them against their inheritances as a way of them buying a house.
The classic New Zealand example of the inability to give anything away for free was the introduction of school zoning. People now pay hundreds of thousands of dollars more for a house if it is in a favourable school zone.
A more serious objection that can never be overcome is as soon as the lucky ordinary family buys the affordable house, they will renovate it to the proper standing reflecting the underlying value of the land. Affordable houses under the plans of the New Zealand Labour Party and the Greens is to build a cheap house on expensive land in Auckland. Land in Auckland is 60% of the price of a house. Land use to be 40% of the value of the house in Auckland.
Plenty of people are in the game of home renovation; some do it as a full-time occupation. They buy an old rundown house on good land and a good location and renovate the house to match the value of the underlying land and location.
The possibility of subsequent renovation to the cheap house on the good land is the death knell of any attempt to sell affordable housing in Auckland or the other New Zealand cities where house prices are spiralling upwards because of restrictions on the supply of land.
Building 100,000 affordable houses were simply present 100,000 renovation opportunities to entrepreneurs. The families who are lucky enough to be first to buy the affordable house will get a marvellous windfall. There will be no long-term impact on the price of land in Auckland because you can’t give anything away for free. Any undervalued good as quickly resold at a profit by budding entrepreneurs after renovating the house to bring it up to market standard given the value of the underlying land.
If the Labour Party and the Greens want more affordable housing, they must support RMA reforms that will increase the supply of land. They won’t do out of sheer political expediency. Labour and the Greens want to win the votes of disgruntled National party voters who already own homes.
"Your neighborhood could be next." San Francisco-wide mailer in support of Prop I, the Mission housing moratorium. http://t.co/PtN38JTaUM— Jed Kolko (@JedKolko) October 10, 2015
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
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