In the lead-up to last year’s September general election, I praised New Zealand Labour’s housing platform because it promised to address both supply and demand distortions via negative gearing reform, banning foreign buyers of existing homes, tighter capital gains taxes, removal of urban growth boundaries, plus bond financing for infrastructure.
I also praised Labour’s plan to reduce immigration by around a third, which would help to relieve chronic housing and infrastructure pressures (especially around Auckland), as well as its plan to build 100,000 public houses over a decade (named ‘KiwiBuild’).
