NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather forecasts

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Budget 2025
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
    • Cooking the Books
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • What the Actual
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Property

Tapu Misa: Housing boom has cost New Zealanders dearly

Tapu Misa
By Tapu Misa
Columnist ·NZ Herald·
4 Nov, 2012 04:30 PM5 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

The tax bias favouring property led to an unhealthy savings-investment balance. Photo / Dean Purcell

The tax bias favouring property led to an unhealthy savings-investment balance. Photo / Dean Purcell

Tapu Misa
Opinion by Tapu Misa
Tapu Misa is a co-editor at E-Tangata and a former columnist for the New Zealand Herald
Learn more

Looking for a house some years ago, I'd often come across properties advertised as "affordable". We'd do the sums and despair at the gap between our income and our dreams. Affordable? Maybe if we stopped feeding the kids.

We became propertied again with luck, and just in the nick of time.

If we were starting out now, we wouldn't be able to afford our modest Auckland house. Its value has more than doubled in the last decade - unlike our income. If we sold our house now, we'd pocket several hundred thousand (untaxed) dollars that we did nothing to earn. Lucky us. And too bad for those who missed the boat.

If we had done what some of our friends did (borrow, buy, sell, reap the rewards, repeat), we'd have been even better off. But that seemed to defeat the purpose of buying a house: putting down roots, settling in for the long haul.

It's not hard to see why so many of us have a vested interest in the system, as damaging and unfair as it is.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Despite the scolding from the Reserve Bank and others, the Kiwi love affair with housing is entirely rational. We continue to invest in property because it's worth our while. We don't trust the stock market. And we don't trust the Government to take care of us in our old age, hence the need to provide a buffer against poverty.

Our ideological preference for home ownership over tenancy seems just as pragmatic. Kiwi tenants don't have the same tenure security as in other countries; and they certainly don't command the same political clout, let alone the same economic advantages as homeowners.

Still, the housing boom has cost us dearly.

Houses have become less affordable - home ownership has dived from around 74 per cent in the early 1990s to around 67 per cent now - and more of our wealth is concentrated in property than most other OECD countries.

Housing accounts for just under 96 per cent of New Zealand households' wealth - up from 74 per cent two decades earlier. And housing related debt has grown from around 58 per cent of GDP in early 2002 to just under 90 per cent.

Discover more

Opinion

Brian Gaynor: Property fallout would top '87 share crash

19 Oct 04:30 PM
Small Business

Heat-pump business running hot

24 Oct 04:30 PM
New Zealand|politics

Govt to open up more land for houses

28 Oct 08:12 PM
Opinion

Govt housing plan misses mark

31 Oct 04:30 PM

It's household debt, not government debt, that's hindering progress. We've borrowed heavily from foreigners not to fund job-creating, foreign-exchange-earning businesses but bigger and more expensive houses.

As the OECD noted in a 2011 report, the tax bias favouring property has led to an unhealthy savings-investment imbalance, and "widening inequalities in the form of larger homes for those who can afford them, but deteriorating affordability for the rest of the population".

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Despite that, central and local government response to housing affordability has been underwhelming.

In a report published in August, Alan Johnson, a senior policy analyst with the Salvation Army's research and policy unit, argued for a radical rethink.

Johnson said our failure to ensure that all Aucklanders have decent, affordable housing is due to institutional failures.

"We have developed, supported and nurtured systems that have sustained and even expanded inequality ... these systems have allowed some Aucklanders to occupy larger and larger houses, while other Aucklanders live in more crowded houses and in sheds, garages and caravans."

They've also "biased our tax system so that not only are house prices excessively inflated but now higher and higher public subsidies are required for modest-income households to be able to afford any housing".

While the problems are too big and the causes too ingrained in our social and economic fabric for quick fixes, Johnson maintains that our responses have also been hampered by our political culture. The neoliberal paradigm that's dominated the political economy for the last three decades has limited the framing of the problem, and the range of solutions.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Ideology certainly seems to the fore in the current Government's drive for "affordable" housing.

When a Labour government first introduced state housing back in 1936, it aimed to provide homes for workers that were as good if not better than housing for other citizens.

By 1950, a National government was promising to sell those houses off.

As home ownership increased, social housing has become marginalised.

The Hobsonville development is a perfect illustration of how difficult it's become to argue for a place for low and modest income families.

The 3000-house development initiated in 2006 under the Clark government was to have included 500 state rental units and 500 "affordable" houses.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

But the plan was panned as "economic vandalism" by the local National MP, John Key, who seemed to have forgotten his state house roots. The $500,000 sections, he implied, would be wasted on state house renters. So far the development has not included one state house.

Then there's the Tamaki transformation programme which is uprooting low-income Glen Innes families from the homes they've lived in for decades. Despite promises to the contrary, state housing there will be halved from 156 to 78 homes.

•Tapu.Misa@gmail.com

Save

    Share this article

Latest from Property

Property

Bought for several hundred pounds, now worth more than $11m

19 May 08:02 AM
Property

Downsizers pay $1.545m for vacant section - almost $400,000 above RV

19 May 07:55 AM
Property

How much money would you make if you sold your house right now?

19 May 07:50 AM

Deposit scheme reduces risk, boosts trust – General Finance

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Property

Bought for several hundred pounds, now worth more than $11m

Bought for several hundred pounds, now worth more than $11m

19 May 08:02 AM

Auckland family selling neighbouring Grey Lynn homes.

Downsizers pay $1.545m for vacant section - almost $400,000 above RV

Downsizers pay $1.545m for vacant section - almost $400,000 above RV

19 May 07:55 AM
How much money would you make if you sold your house right now?

How much money would you make if you sold your house right now?

19 May 07:50 AM
'Smash her': Family evicted after property manager threatened

'Smash her': Family evicted after property manager threatened

19 May 07:00 AM
Gold demand soars amid global turmoil
sponsored

Gold demand soars amid global turmoil

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • What the Actual
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven CarGuide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP