You won’t solve housing market issues without being constructive
A week ago today Labour’s spokesperson for housing, Phil Twyford, released some data which apparently showed that Chinese buyers are currently snapping up 40% of all homes on the market in Auckland, although Chinese residents in Auckland are just 9% of the population.…
100 Comments PINZ in the Auckland housing balloon?
I was a bit surprised to hear the Property Institute of New Zealand warn of an “apartment bubble” in Auckland earlier this week. I was even more surprised when I read their press release. The CEO, Ashley Church, is predicting a bubble as a response to 1) banks being likely to decrease their deposit thresholds on apartments from 20% to 15%, and 2) the Reserve Bank potentially bringing in “loan-to-income restrictions”, where mortgagees would then only be able to borrow X times their income.…
Development update: June 2015
It’s been a busy month for development: Auckland Council announced they’d be selling off some of their surplus land, and so did the government (which Matt wrote about here).
This makes good headlines for the council and government, making it look like they’re taking steps to tackle the supposed housing crisis.…
City centre employment and the CRL: good news or bad?
If you’ve been keeping up with the news or if you’ve been following our Development Tracker, you’ll know that there’s a lot of new office development activity starting to happen in Auckland’s city centre. And a significant amount of it right on the CRL route:
Under construction: 151 Victoria Street West, with 17,600 square metres (sqm) due for completion later this year.…
Are vacant homes adding to Auckland’s housing shortage?
As Auckland housing hysteria gets more, well, hysterical, there seem to be a few people worried that investors are leaving homes vacant rather than bothering to rent them out – preferring to rely on capital gains as a source of income instead.…
Unbundle carparks, find innovative transport solutions
As I’ve written before, car parking doesn’t come cheap for apartments and terraces. Typically, car parks in a basement or building will cost around $30,000 to $50,000 each to provide. This can make a big difference to the overall cost of an apartment, something often overlooked in the debate about affordable housing.…
Development update: May 2015
The RCG Development Tracker has just been given its May update, as always featuring a number of new projects. I’ve also added Auckland’s rail network and stations – sorry, I really should have done this months ago – so it’s possible to see where developments are happening close to train stations.…
Sometimes people move
As written in the Herald a few weeks ago, sometimes people move. Sometimes they move to Auckland. Sometimes they move out of Auckland. Sometimes they even move country. But paragraphs like this can be a bit misleading:
As house prices in the country’s biggest city spiral out of control, Auckland homeowners are cashing in their chips and buying mansions in the regions.…
Do parking minimums restrict competition?
During the Unitary Plan submissions process, a number of retailers and shopping centre owners took a pretty conservative stance on transport. They argued for maintaining parking minimums, replacing maximums with minimums in some areas, and so on. Some argued that cars would always be the main way of getting to shops, and this should be written into the Unitary Plan.…
Development update: April 2015
New projects are starting to pop up around Auckland, Christchurch and (to a lesser extent) the rest of the country at an amazing rate. There are plenty of new additions to the RCG Development Tracker this month – in residential alone, that includes Botanica Mt Eden, Anzac Lofts, Hemisphere Apartments, and Beach & Cavalli.…
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