By Leith van Onselen This week, I was asked by New Zealand’s leading finance and business commentary site, Interest.co.nz, to publish a guest post for their Friday Top 10. Given the vigorous debate in New Zealand around housing affordability and freeing up the planning system, I decided to use the post as an opportunity to
By Leith van Onselen A number of researchers and commentators in the United States are scratching their heads over the decline in labour mobility, which is said to be increasing income inequality and reducing the nation’s potential economic growth, since labour is not shifting to where it is most needed. A new article published in
By Leith van Onselen The UK Telegraph has published an interesting article summarising new research from Oxford University, which claims that children who spend long periods of time in child care are more likely to develop behavioural problems such as hyperactivity: The disclosure will revive debate over the best way to raise children amid a
By Leith van Onselen Earlier this week, FT Alphaville published an article questioning the notion that London housing is in the midst of another boom/bubble, instead arguing that prices may have crashed: London is in the grip of a terrible and deep housing bust that has only just begun to turn. Greater London house prices,
By Leith van Onselen Earlier this week, joint winner of the 2013 Economics Nobel Prize, Robert Shiller, identified some parts of the US, Australia, China, Brazil, India, Norway, and Belgium as countries that could potentially be in the thoes of a housing bubble. For some strange reason – maybe and oversight – Shiller left
By Leith van Onselen For decades now, an aray of commentators and academics have written-off suburbia, claiming that households are increasingly choosing to live in the inner city in order to be closer to night life and amenities. Planners and governments have also climbed on board, in many instances errecting barriers to contain the urban
By Leith van Onselen I have written previously how the UK housing system is arguably the worst in the developed world. Thanks to the Town and Country Planning Act 1946, the right to develop has been virtually nationalised and the UK is ruled by NIMBYs. All of the major cities and towns in the UK
By Leith van Onselen The UK housing market looks to be heating-up once again following the implementation of the government’s “Help-to-Buy” shared equity scheme for first home buyers (FHBs) and the Bank of England’s “Funding-for-Lending” program, which subsidises lenders’ borrowings provided they pass on the loans to households and firms. According to three main housing
By Leith van Onselen The New Zealand Initiative last week released a brilliant new report entitled Different Places, Different Means: Why Some Countries Build More Than Others, which provides a comprehensive assessment of housing supply systems in four markets: Britain; Switzerland; Germany; and Texas. As argued by me many times before, the report describes Britain’s
By Leith van Onselen The Canadian housing market continues to reach for the stars. After house prices fell for six consecutive months to February 2013, following the introduction of a range of macroprudential controls on high loan-to-value ratio mortgage lending, values have since for six straight months, pushing Canadian housing values to their highest level
Cross-posted with permission from Dr Alan Moran at Catallaxy Files It is astonishing the disconnect between those looking at housing from the financial market perspective and those of us looking at the regulatory barriers. Christopher Joye in the AFR today discusses a debate he has been having with fellow self-proclaimed housing guru Gerard Minack. Apparently these
By Leith van Onselen I’ve just come across a New Zealand Productivity Commission research note attempting to quantify the effect of Auckland’s urban growth boundary (called the “Metropolitan Urban Limit” or MUL) on land prices. The results indicate that Auckland’s MUL has significantly increased urban land prices in general, with land prices in the lower part
By Leith van Onselen The Canadian housing market continues to bounce back from a mini slump brought about by a range of macroprudential controls introduced last year on high loan-to-value ratio mortgage lending, which including shorter maximum loan amortisation periods (i.e. 25 years instead of 30 years). After house prices fell for six consecutive months
By Leith van Onselen I have noted previously (here, here, and here) how the Netherlands housing system all but guarantees unaffordable housing and a susceptibility to housing bubbles, via: ridiculously easy credit, with a third of mortgages guaranteed by the government; mortgage interest tax relief and generous subsidies offered to home buyers; a dysfunctional rental
By Leith van Onselen Back in February, the Canadian housing market looked to have hit a wall. The Government had recently implemented a range of macroprudential controls on high loan-to-value ratio mortgage lending, including shorter maximum loan amortisation periods (i.e. 25 years instead of 30 years), and house prices had fallen for six consecutive months
By Leith van Onselen New Zealand’s Finance Minister, Bill English, has today firmly argued against urban containment policies that are contributing to the current blowoff in the Auckland house price bubble. From Interest.co.nz: Finance Minister Bill English has spoken out against “compact cities” saying that they drive up house prices. In a speech to the
By Leith van Onselen Interest.co.nz has today posted an interesting article quoting Westpac Bank economists on the Auckland housing market, where the stratified median house prices hit a record $634,000 in June (see next chart). From Interest.co.nz: The rapidly heating Auckland housing market is being driven primarily by buyers’ expectation of capital gains – not
By Leith van Onselen Interest.co.nz’s Bernard Hickey published an interesting article over the weekend arguing that New Zealand’s councils, which are primarily responsible for planning and land supply, should be paid a share of income taxes rather than just receive rates in order improve incentives for development: Developers, builders, renovators and potential home buyers are
By Leith van Onselen The Economist over the weekend published a great primer on the benefits of broad-based land taxes: Taxing land and property is one of the most efficient and least distorting ways for governments to raise money. A pure land tax, one without regard to how land is used or what is built
By Leith van Onselen Earlier this year, Trulia published an interesting article on how thousands of Californians are emigrating to other states due to exorbitant housing costs, with many choosing to settle in Texas: A constant debate in California politics is whether jobs and people are leaving the state… Here are the basic facts. In
By Leith van Onselen The Case-Shiller 20-city house price index for April 2013 was released over night, which revealed an ongoing recovery in US house prices, with prices lifting by a seasonally-adjusted 1.6% over the month, 4.9% over the quarter, and 12.0% over the year. It was the biggest yearly price gain since March 2006
By Leith van Onselen The UK housing debacle has taken another turn, with a report commissioned by the homeless charity, Shelter, claiming that it now takes a single person 14-years on average to save for a typical UK home, or 30-years in London. The negative press around Shelter’s findings prompted the Labour Opposition leader, Ed
By Leith van Onselen The Bank of New Zealand’s chief economist, Tony Alexander, has today provided a radical eight-point plan to restore housing affordability. From Interest.co.nz: Alexander says the optimal solution to the problem “is a quick jump in house supply combined with reductions in building materials costs”. His suggestions are: Initiate a large builder
Cross-posted from Coppola Comment House prices in the UK are too high. How much too high they are depends on where you are: house prices have been rising in London because rich Asian businessmen and French aristocrats are buying up prime real estate as a safe haven investment for their filthy lucre, apparently. But outside
By Leith van Onselen Regular readers will recognise that I am highly sceptical of the UK housing system, which I believe operates world’s worst practice when it comes to social and economic outcomes. A key tenet of the UK’s housing malaise is its dysfunctional supply system, which has become increasingly constipated following sixty years of
