PHOTO: Ageing population
New Zealand’s ageing population will be one of the biggest drivers of the housing crisis in decades to come if nothing is done to dramatically increase supply, a new report has found.
The Need to Build: The demographic drivers of housing demand, published on Tuesday by think-tank The New Zealand Initiative, outlines how as the population ages, the average number of people living in each household shrinks.
Fewer people per house means more housing is needed even without immigration or other increases to the population – a fact “rarely discussed in the public sphere”, according to report author Leonard Hong.
“In the long-run, this is bound to get worse – this is just the tip of the iceberg,” he told The AM Show on Tuesday. “Population ageing is going to increase housing demand more than we thought.”
New Zealand’s median house price is now over $720,000, and when compared to income, ranked as ‘severely unaffordable’ by analysts Demographia.
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