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As much as I hate to say it, the building industry needs some hard times to bring competition and efficiency back to the table.
I’m in the industry, it’s become a trough where it’s very easy for the poorest operator to profit from the extraordinary situation Covid and low interest rates has put us in. The gouging going on in some cases is terrible.
I’m very confident a slow down will see significant price drops.
The rule changes made by councils to avoid responsibility, and thus prosecution, has lead to extraordinary increases, and ramped up demands on professions like engineering to the point an engineer with capacity is as commonplace as the moa.
There is much a willing local or central govt could do to ease costs, but I’m equally confident they will not. - Mike H
I have numerous friends who have sold rentals or are giving up on plans to build.
The big problem is that they don’t have viable alternatives.
The country NEEDS rentals and new homes. - Welly G
I was planning on doing a simple one-lot subdivision here.
The total cost was about $300,000 for fees, permits and all the other greedy council costs, plus the time it would take would be about 12 to 18 months.
No way I would now invest one cent in this country. - Bruce C
In reply to Bruce C:
I’m pleased to hear that.
It’s time the true council-incurred costs around subdivisions were being met by the developers.
Please go and invest in another country.
Greedy councils are just doing their job and trying to keep the infrastructure up to date.
Housing, as a form of investment, does more harm than good to our society in NZ.
We need people to invest in businesses that earn export dollars.
If we had affordable housing people would stay here rather than going to Aussie. - Matt J
The price of developing land and building a new house isn’t going to drop.
The Government’s new form of RMA is going to push costs higher as local government is obligated to take on extra requirements. Our housing stock is old and a lot unfit.
This will push the problem further down the road. Another disaster from Govt policy. Drop GST from new builds. - Guy M
I wonder if 2023/24 will be worse than the 2008 crash in the housing and building sector?
That was pretty grim as it was with a lot of builders and tradies out of a job.
I certainly wouldn’t want to be building using borrowed money now until I knew that the economic maelstrom that is about to come was well and truly behind us and that falling house prices had reached their bottom. - David B
Interesting that nobody’s really making a big issue out of the fact that first-home buyers are worse off now than they were last year. It seems as though things are OK if everybody’s suffering, it’s only bad if some people are doing well and others not as well. - Guy S
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