Luke Kirkness: It's time to tackle the housing crisis - now

The forecast seems to be only bad news for home owners looking to sell. Photo / NZME

The latest CoreLogic property report makes clear there is no reprieve for first-home buyers.

As reported yesterday (A2-3, March 7), Rotorua home sellers averaged a profit of $410,000 during the last quarter of 2021 with just 0.6 per cent of sales making a loss and in Tauranga, 99.8 per cent of properties sold made a profit too.

CoreLogic chief property economist Kelvin Davidson says local markets have boomed recently but now there are signs of a slowdown, with credit harder to get and mortgage rates rising.

In reality, the market forecast seems to be only bad news for home owners looking to sell but I have little sympathy as someone looking to get on the market.

I'm trying not to beat the drum about poor me and the daunting figures plaguing the housing market, a drum that has been smashed to a pulp, but a few things need to change:

• Hopeful first-home buyers need to be more realistic. It has always been hard to buy a home, I'm led to believe, and while median house prices are up around the million-dollar mark in many Bay of Plenty suburbs, there are others where the average price dwarfs in comparison.

• More homes need to be built and land made available. Tauranga has long been one of, if not New Zealand's, fastest-growing cities. And why wouldn't people want to live in this magnificent part of the world? However, the infrastructure is not up to scratch and there are similar problems in nearby Rotorua.

• We need to build up, not out. The New Zealand dream centres on the family home on a quarter-acre section but this is no longer tenable, especially for plenty of first-home buyers. Building quality housing in the form of a tall apartment building makes sense practically but also for our struggling CBDs, which would celebrate an influx of people.

These are not wild or sensational ideas, but at this rate who knows what might happen because, in my view, common sense doesn't seem to be applied much when it comes to the housing crisis.

We know what the problem is and we've had plenty of potential solutions offered over the years but still, from the perspective of a hopeful buyer, it seems like nothing or very little has been achieved. Why?

We've got a prime opportunity to show the rest of the country how to tackle these issues and how to provide for everyone in the community.

We cannot afford to delay this any longer because it is a problem that won't be fixed quickly.