PHOTO: Ashley Church
A property investment expert has claimed the housing crisis is a myth, and that we’ve built more than enough homes in the past few decades to keep up with population growth.
Ashley Church‘s views, expressed on The AM Show on Friday, are at odds with the Government, economists and advocacy groups, which all place the shortage in the tens of thousands.
“If you go back to 1986 and you look at the census, the short answer is we don’t [have a crisis],” Church, the former head of the Property Institute of New Zealand, said.
“We’ve actually built far more houses than we would have required just to stand still. This mantra that we’ve been parroting since about 2013 is political, not practical. It’s not real.”
Reports commissioned by the Government in 2017 and 2018 suggested the crisis was very real – particularly in Auckland, which was short by up to 45,000 houses. In June this year, Kiwibank said the shortage was getting worse – around 130,000 nationwide, likely rising to 150,000 next year, despite a recent rise in the number of residential consents being issued.
READ MORE VIA NEWSHUB
