PHOTO: ACT Party leader David Seymour. RNZ
ACT emphasizes that New Zealand’s approach to addressing the housing crisis should prioritize increasing the housing supply, unveiling its strategy to revive the “Kiwi dream.”
Party leader David Seymour asserts that the country should establish a clear supply target, holding both Labour and National accountable for their ineffective demand-side policies. Seymour notes that many young New Zealanders have abandoned their dreams of homeownership due to skyrocketing prices. Measures like tax changes, loan-to-value ratios, first home grants, and foreign buyer bans have failed to address the fundamental shortage of housing, only benefiting select groups while supply remains limited.
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ACT contends that the solution lies in ramping up construction, aligning with forecasts from the New Zealand Initiative and Infometrics, estimating the need for 51,000 new homes annually for the next five years. To tackle the housing crisis, governments must adopt a fresh approach, as tinkering around the edges, as done by both Labour and National, has proved insufficient. The persistently high construction costs and excessive bureaucracy are factors contributing to New Zealand’s elevated housing prices.
ACT’s plan to resurrect New Zealand’s building prowess encompasses several key elements:
- A comprehensive overhaul of Resource Management laws rooted in property rights, ensuring that property development is allowed unless it adversely affects others’ property enjoyment.
- Reforming infrastructure funding, including the allocation of over a billion dollars in GST revenue to local councils based on their building consent activities and permitting targeted rates for financing infrastructure in new developments.
- Allowing builders to opt out of the council building consent process to enable the use of innovative techniques and materials that enhance affordability and quality.
- Leveraging building insurance as an alternative to building consent authorities, supplemented by Codes of Practice to reduce the need for consents, saving both time and money.
Deputy leader Brooke Van Velden underscores the importance of enabling hardworking Kiwis to attain homeownership through the right policies.
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Seymour highlights the stark contrast between historical housing price trends, with housing costs outpacing inflation by 171% from 2000 to 2019. He points out that young New Zealanders may not realize that this was not always the case. During the 1960s and 1970s, home construction rates consistently exceeded eight homes per thousand people per year, peaking at 13 in 1974. However, home ownership rates peaked at 74% in 1986 and have since declined to 64.5% in 2018, largely due to diminishing construction rates, which plummeted to around six new homes per thousand people per year in the 1980s and early 1990s and dipped below four after the Great Financial Crisis.
ACT’s call for bolstering housing supply stands in stark contrast to its strong opposition to the bipartisan Medium Density Residential Standards introduced in 2021, a position upheld despite National’s withdrawal following public outcry. The policy today reaffirms ACT’s original stance, advocating for the respect of private property rights and the preservation of property owners’ legitimate expectations, established through years of legal precedent and practice.
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