Have your say: The housing minister says prices must fall - is he right?

Tuesday, 18 June 2024

Do you agree with the housing minister’s goal of lowering prices? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Housing Minister Chris Bishop says house prices in Aotearoa are unaffordable and need to fall.

“We want housing to be more affordable for New Zealanders,” he said at Monday’s post-Cabinet news conference. “Average house prices in New Zealand are too expensive.”

Bishop said the comparison between average household incomes and average prices made New Zealand’s housing market “severely unaffordable by international standards”.

There were many causes for the “outrageous” rise in house prices over the past two decades, he said, but a major factor was restrictive planning laws.

Bishop said Monday’s announcement of a legislative proposal that would allow the building of “granny flats” on existing properties without a resource consent was part of the Government’s plan to liberalise those planning laws.

Earlier this year, the minister also outlined a plan to require councils to earmark 30 years’ worth of land for housing development, while allowing them to opt out of the bi-partisan housing density rules that National had signed up to in opposition.

“There are lots of ways to make housing more affordable,” Bishop said on Monday. “One way is sustained moderation in house prices. Another way is to go for growth and have a sustained lift in incomes.”

Existing homeowners may be “a little bit worried” about a goal of lower house prices, he said, but housing needed to be more affordable if Aotearoa was to be “a property-owning democracy, which we used to be”.