By Leith van Onselen I noted in the lead-up to the New Zealand General Election, held on 23 September 2017, that Labour had an excellent housing platform that addresses 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
By Leith van Onselen The REINZ has released its house price data for January, which revealed a 0.7% seasonally adjusted monthly rise in the national median house price, with prices also up 7.0% year-on-year: Outside Auckland, seasonally adjusted house prices rose by 0.6% in January, with prices up 8.9% year-on-year. Looking at the major cities,
By Leith van Onselen I reported yesterday how a government-commissioned ‘stocktake’ of New Zealand’s housing market revealed that the nation faces a “deeper and more entrenched” housing crisis than previously thought, which is having “devastating impacts” particularly on homelessness. Central to the problem was that dwelling construction has fallen well short of immigration-driven population growth
By Leith van Onselen MB has consistently argued that New Zealand’s housing market is even more diabolical than Australia’s, as evident by it being the most expensive in the Anglosphere when measured against GDP: As well as against incomes: Now, a ‘stocktake’ commissioned by the New Zealand Government has revealed that the nation faces a
By Leith van Onselen The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) has released its latest Monetary Policy Statement, whereby it has left the cash rate unchanged at 1.75% and noted that the housing market has accelerated despite moderate housing credit growth. It also indicates that rates will be on hold for the foreseeable future Below
By Leith van Onselen Statistics New Zealand has released its labour force data for the December quarter, with the unemployment rate falling 0.1% to a 9-year low of 4.5%. Below are the key points from the release: Unemployment rate fell to 4.5 percent. Underutilisation rate rose to 12.1 percent. Employment rate remained unchanged at 67.8
By Leith van Onselen Statistics New Zealand released its permanent & long-term migration figures for December 2017, which revealed that immigration into New Zealand has continued to drift back from record high levels, with 70,016 annual net permanent and long-term arrivals landing in New Zealand in the year to December, down from a peak of
By Leith van Onselen Auckland’s chronic housing shortage continues to worsen, despite dwelling consents hitting a 15-year high, according to Statistics New Zealand. There were 1,450 dwelling consents issued across Auckland in November – a 15-year high – but still only 10,731 consents issued over the year (see below charts). Whereas for New Zealand as
By Leith van Onselen Statistics New Zealand has released national accounts figures for the September quarter of 2017, with Gross domestic product (GDP) rising by 0.6% over the quarter to be up 3.0% year-on-year. GDP per capita rose by 0.2% in the September quarter and by a soggy 0.8% year-on-year. The growth in GDP was
By Leith van Onselen Statistics New Zealand released its permanent & long-term migration figures for November 2017, which revealed that immigration into New Zealand has continued to drift back from record high levels, with 70,354 annual net permanent and long-term arrivals landing in New Zealand in the year to November, down from a peak of
By Leith van Onselen Early this morning, I wrote how “New Zealand is a property bubble with an economy attached”, based on the nation’s extreme housing valuations (against GDP and incomes), as well as the extreme share of the nation’s wealth tied-up in housing. Today, Statistics New Zealand has reaffirmed this view with the annual
By Leith van Onselen Statistics New Zealand yesterday released data showing that New Zealand’s net wealth has passed $1.5 trillion courtesy of soaring property prices: New Zealanders’ wealth rose at its fastest pace in a decade, mainly driven by rising property values, Stats NZ said today. New Zealanders’ net worth rose $136 billion to $1.5
By Leith van Onselen New Zealand’s recently appointed Labour-led coalition Government will today implement the first tranche of its demand-side housing reforms, introducing into parliament legislation to amend the Overseas Investment Act to ban overseas buyers from purchasing established housing. From Interest.co.nz: … the Government says its move will ensure that house prices are set
By Leith van Onselen The REINZ has released its house price data for November, which revealed a 0.2% seasonally adjusted monthly rise in the national median house price, with prices up 4.0% year-on-year: Outside Auckland, seasonally adjusted house prices rose by 0.8% in November, with prices up 8.8% year-on-year. Looking at the major cities, Auckland’s
By Leith van Onselen Throughout the previous New Zealand National Government’s reign, it continually pinned the blame for New Zealand’s woeful housing affordability solely on a lack of supply, completely ignoring the role played by the government’s own mass immigration program: On Friday, Westpac released a research note, entitled “They came, they saw, they’re leaving”,
By Leith van Onselen Hot on the heels of his masterful speech to the Salvation Army setting the framework for Labour’s housing reform agenda, New Zealand’s housing minister, Phil Twyford, has been presented with a damning briefing on the state of the market, which has caused “stark” inequality between young and old. From Stuff.co.nz: The
By Leith van Onselen I noted in the lead-up to the New Zealand General Election, held on 23 September, that Labour had an excellent housing platform that addresses 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
By Leith van Onselen Back in August, Bernard Doyle, a strategist at JBWere, penned a ripping report on the New Zealand economy, arguing that rabid population growth was masking underlying weak productivity and poor per capita GDP growth: New Zealand has been in a productivity recession since 2012. Not that you’d notice from headline GDP
By Leith van Onselen Auckland’s chronic housing shortage continues to worsen, according to new data released this morning by Statistics New Zealand, which shows that dwelling consents continue to fall well short of immigration-fueled population growth. There were 1,034 dwelling consents issued across Auckland in October and only 10,469 consents issued over the year (trend
By Leith van Onselen After the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) prematurely decided to ease its successful mortgage LVR restrictions yesterday, New Zealand’s new finance minister, Grant Robertson, has claimed that he wants to simultaneously improve housing affordability while ensuring that home values continue to rise by 2%-3% a year. From NewsHub: “What we’ve
By Leith van Onselen The RBNZ has released several pieces of data suggesting that the RBNZ’s recent loan-to-value ratio restrictions have been successful in cooling mortgage demand amid record population growth. As shown in the next chart, New Zealand household borrowing continued to retrace sharply, recording annual growth of 6.5% in September: Most of New
By Leith van Onselen Apparently Auckland’s housing market is no longer in “crisis”, according to the National opposition’s housing spokesman, Michael Woodhouse: National’s housing spokesman Michael Woodhouse says flatlining property prices in Auckland prove there is no housing crisis. Sale prices in Auckland have stagnated in the last few months, after years of double-digit growth…
By Leith van Onselen Data released by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) yesterday revealed that property investor lending has continued to cool after the RBNZ implemented new loan-to-value ratio (LVR) restrictions targeting investors, which officially came into effect on 1 October 2016, although banks began informally applying the rules since they were first
By Leith van Onselen I noted in the lead-up to the New Zealand General Election, held on 23 September, that Labour had an excellent housing platform that addresses 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
By Leith van Onselen Last month, Statistics New Zealand released its Household Living Costs Price Indexes, which revealed that low-income households’ costs have been growing at a much faster rate than high-income households: Today, Statistics New Zealand has released annual national accounts data, which shows that Kiwi households continue to outspend their incomes: Household net
By Leith van Onselen Six years ago, I penned an article entitled Why developers land bank, which attempted to explain the drivers and motivations for land banking. Included in this article was the argument that land banking is more common in markets with regulatory barriers to land supply, such as urban growth boundaries (UGB), because
By Leith van Onselen Statistics New Zealand released its permanent & long-term migration figures for October 2017, which revealed that immigration into New Zealand has continued to drift back from record high levels, with 70,694 annual net permanent and long-term arrivals landing in New Zealand in the year to October, down from a peak of
By Leith van Onselen The New Zealand Labour-led Government’s promise to rein-in the country’s housing market via a combination of demand and supply-side reforms is already bearing fruit, with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s (RBNZ) Household Inflation expectations survey reporting a significant slowing in house price expectations over the next year (see right columns
By Leith van Onselen The REINZ has released its house price data for October, which revealed a 1.2% seasonally adjusted monthly rise in the national median house price, with prices up 3.3% year-on-year: Outside Auckland, seasonally adjusted house prices rose by 0.9% in October, with prices up 8.5% year-on-year. Looking at the major cities, Auckland’s
By Leith van Onselen The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) has released its latest Monetary Policy Statement, whereby it has left the cash rate unchanged at 1.75% and noted that the housing market has moderated. It also indicates that rates will be on hold for the foreseeable future Below is the Statement by RBNZ
