By Leith van Onselen 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
By Leith van Onselen The REINZ has released its house price data for February, which revealed a 0.8% seasonally adjusted monthly rise in the national median house price, with prices also up 7.1% year-on-year: Outside Auckland, seasonally adjusted house prices rose by 2.0% in February, with prices up 8.5% year-on-year. Looking at the major cities,
By Leith van Onselen Statistics New Zealand on Friday released its dwelling consents data, which revealed that Auckland’s chronic housing shortage continues to worsen. There were 31,251 dwelling consents issued across New Zealand in the year to January 2018 and just 11,073 consents issued across Auckland: This is nowhere near enough to keep pace with
By Leith van Onselen Last month, 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 over the
By Leith van Onselen A week after Statistics New Zealand released data showing that the nation’s fertility rate has hit an all-time low: Statistics New Zealand has today released data showing that annual net migration into New Zealand has finally eased, falling to 70,100 in the year to January 2017, down 1,200 from January 2016:
By Leith van Onselen New Zealand’s Labour-led coalition government plans to be the first in the world to measure its success against how it does socially, culturally and environmentally, rather than relying on GDP – a rather useless measure that most economists and policy makers focus on. From Stuff.nz: By the 2019 Budget, it would
By Leith van Onselen Statistics New Zealand has released new data showing that the nation’s fertility rate has hit an all-time low: The total fertility rate summarises the age-specific fertility rates into a single-number indicator of fertility. It indicates, on average, the number of babies a woman would have in her lifetime if the age-specific
By Leith van Onselen There was a smidgen of good new on Friday for the New Zealand’s Labour-led Government, with immigration and population growth continuing to ease in the December quarter: In the year to December, New Zealand’s population moderated to 97,000 with net overseas migration (NOM) moderating to 69,970. This is down from the
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…
