By Leith van Onselen Last week, New Zealand’s parliament passed legislation to extend the “bright line test” out to five years, thus ensuring that if a speculator sells a rental property within five years they will pay income tax on the capital gain. From Interest.co.nz: The bright line test – which requires tax to be
By Leith van Onselen Auckland’s chronic housing shortage continues to worsen, despite dwelling consents continuing to rise, according to Statistics New Zealand. There were 11,052 dwelling consents issued across Auckland in the year to February (up 10%), and 31,245 consents issued across New Zealand over the year (up 3.6%): Despite the pick-up, none of this
By Leith van Onselen The New Zealand Labour-led Government’s review of the Reserve Bank Act has broadened the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s (RBNZ) mandate on setting the official cash rate (OCR) to target the “maximum sustainable level of employment” as well as price stability (inflation). It has also established a seven-member committee to set
By Leith van Onselen The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) has today left the official cash rate (OCR) unchanged at 1.75% and noted that economic growth is expected to strengthen and the labour market tighten, despite the housing market being restrained. It also indicates that rates will remain on hold for the foreseeable future
By Leith van Onselen In August last year, 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 Statistics New Zealand released its permanent & long-term migration figures for February 2018, which revealed that immigration into New Zealand has continued to drift back from record high levels, with 68,943 annual net permanent and long-term arrivals landing in New Zealand in the year to February, down from a peak of
By Leith van Onselen With New Zealand’s Labour-led coalition Government nearly six months old, Roy Morgan has released new polling showing that poverty and housing are now the primary concerns of New Zealand voters: Quantified thematic analysis of the verbatim responses of a nationally representative sample of 999 New Zealanders found the economy and things
By Leith van Onselen In June last year, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) launched consultation to have debt-to-income (DTI) limits added to its macro-prudential toolkit. In the consultation paper, the RBNZ proposed a DTI limit of 5.0 times incomes and noted that DTI limits are used in other markets around the world, including the
By Leith van Onselen Statistics New Zealand has released national accounts figures for the December quarter of 2017, with Gross domestic product (GDP) rising by 0.6% over the quarter to be up 2.9% year-on-year. GDP per capita rose by 0.1% in the September quarter and by a soggy 0.7% year-on-year – the lowest per capita
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
