New Zealand’s housing crisis solutions

Median house prices in New Zealand are 8.3 times that of the median household income. For buyers looking to purchase a median home, a 20% deposit is approximately $173,000 – an amount that would take the same median household around 14 years to save.

Taking a mission-oriented approach to the housing crisis means looking at ways new players could enter the market to relieve pressure on the development pipeline. It means shifting demand away from areas where supply is too difficult to deliver, to places where homes are more affordable and readily available.

Some proposed solutions in our latest discussion paper include:

• Planning reforms to encourage dense, liveable cities to accommodate more homes while also supporting health and wellbeing
  
• Improved access to finance, increasing scale and competition in the development sector while supporting innovation and economic growth
  
• Introducing shared-ownership products to create new opportunities for first-time buyers to access the housing ladder
  
• A Build-to-Rent asset class that expands the rental market at ‘investment grade’ scale
  
• A National Spatial Plan could be used to rebalance the economy, aligning affordable homes with higher paid jobs and assisting with policymaking, decision-taking, and public/private investments

Read more about how we can better solve the national housing crisis by downloading the discussion paper below.