Auckland population growth to stretch land supply, increase the number of renters and create infrastructure problems, report says

....when is this Government going to start allowing affordable housing to be built?

Hugh, can you please explain that to me.

Slum Towers folks...the only answer...pack em in....make em pay....

@ Hugh Pavletich

Your question "when is this Government going to start allowing affordable housing to be built?" is ambiguous in that it implies "affordable housing" is being dis-allowed by the Government. Could some-one please clarify .. is the Auckland City mentioned in the above report the new super-sized Auckland City or the old inner-central Auckland City. Either way, doesnt matter, where would you put them. Be specific. Thirty years ago Auckland and its immediate environs had a desperate shortage of recreational open space (discounting foreshores and coastlines) when the population was a lot less than it is now. About the only place is somewhere north of Helensville or Wellsford, or south between Drury and Hamilton.

There's No Government Like No Government - Unless it's Very, Very Small ..

Libertarian Party t-shirt.

Wow, what a big report! Someone made a buck writing that.

Olly was right!

Matt in Auckland...have a read on the Auckland CBD-appears to be a popular location ;)

Key point I got was: North Shore, Waitakere, Auckland South West and Manukau North West HMAs have the

highest levels of total housing need.

Auckland certainly is a seperate market from the overall NZ market.

Number of questionable statements in this report, including:

• Housing demand will be particularly shaped by the growth in older, couple-only and single person households and will increase demand for smaller one and two-bedroom dwellings.

I Know lots of older people who are either staying in 3/4 bedroom houses, or moving out of Auckland

• Auckland's residential development capacity under the existing Regional Growth Strategy (RGS) will be nearing full capacity by 2026.

So there is plenty of time to add additional capacity by freeing up greenfield land, which is what will be done

But I do agree that housing supply will come under pressure. In particular, with peak oil, the premium will become attached to more central living. So 28/29 yr old, I do agree that in the long term centrally located property will stand up well. But you need to be buyiing it as owner occupier, unless you are prepared, as an investor, to tolerate a 5-6% return for 6-7 years ie. if you are in it for the longer haul - 10 years plus - the wait might be worth it. But that takes out all the traditional short term ,capital gain infatuated investors

key findings addressed:

* Strong population growth in Auckland will place stress on Auckland's dwelling capacity, infrastructure, transport, and city form as it shapes the housing market until 2026.

so stop it growing.

• Dwelling demand for the 14 defined housing market areas (HMAs) will increase by 39.6 percent - from 431,890 dwellings in 2006 to 601,420 by 2026.

a guess - somebody extrapolated a line on a graph, no reference to energy supplies. So from a false premise. Projection not worth a knob of goat shit.

• The Auckland region already has (June 2009) significant renter housing affordability issues - 49.9 percent of all private renter households are experiencing ‘financial housing stress’ – households spending more than 30 percent of that household's total gross income on housing costs.

so control the amount the landlords can screw out of the tenants - actually, this will happen by default (see energy, above - less opportunity for income generation, less ability to pay rent).

*Demand for rental accommodation will continue to increase a significantly faster rate (63.5%) than demand for owner-occupier dwellings (26.2%).

see above

*Home ownership has significantly reduced from 70.7 percent to 66.9 percent between 1996 and 2006.

see above above

*The absolute size of the ‘intermediate housing market’ (IHM) increased from 39,700 to 77,110 households between 2001 and 2009. ( IHM is the number of private renter households who have a least one member in paid employment and cannot afford to purchase a dwelling at the lower quartile sale price, assuming standard bank lending conditions.)

see above above above - if everyone just owned one house the prices would be (much) lower, due to no rental-geared floor to the market. This is about greed, impact thereof on the margins.

*Housing demand will be particularly shaped by the growth in older, couple-only and single person households and will increase demand for smaller one and two-bedroom dwellings.

Agreed. Attention should also be given to multiple users/owners of the recent too-big housing stock

*Auckland's residential development capacity under the existing Regional Growth Strategy (RGS) will be nearing full capacity by 2026.

That's fine, that's well past Peak Oil, and all bets are off (probably have been for a decade) anyway.

*A mismatch between the location of dwelling capacity in the region and the location of projected employment growth (especially for higher skilled and high paid occupations in Auckland city). 51 percent of the employment growth in the region is projected to be located in Auckland City but this area only has 32 percent of regional dwelling capacity.

Given that it doesn't take into account Peak Energy (even the conservative IEA World Energy Outlook 2010 would do) this comment isn't worthy of consideration.

• The implications for Auckland and its new governance will include: pressures on land development capacity; significant increases in the number of renters and rental properties required; as well as pressures on transport infrastructure.

Aye, transport. There's the rub. Food to the people. Services. What will work look like during the long emergency / powerdown? Until you ascertain that, you don't know anything. Some folk partially 'get it', and talk of commuting by train rather than by car. First, define what will be 'work' in an energy-depleted world.

The deckchairs are sliding down the deck, folks - we need more deckchairs.

The report adds very little to what we already know, at significant expense.

So really it is one big "whoopdeedooo" - I agree with Hugh. CHRANZ have been handing out millions of dollars for years for such reports. Sure, they are good reports, but they are simply descriptive

We don't need more analysis, we want practical answers

And the answers aren't difficult AT ALL

John Banks see this as "a great oppurtunity" and it will be for the members of the Property Council (of which Hugh was the  South Island president). The rest of the population will be able to play their part  by helping to pay for the new infrastructure.

Build state houses in North Albany with close access to the North Shore bus lane, Waitakere with close access to the train station & Drury creating a new train station (on the already available railway line. This would mean less roads would need to be built & the people living in these area's have access to transport. These area's have services already available (maybe not as much for North Albany) & land is available to build modern version of the post WW2 state houses but on smaller sections. The tower block scenario doesn't work.

I reckon if you put in great infrastructure and efficient methods of reducing traffic into and out of the CBD, houses would not cost as much because the commute would be a lot less. To be honest, Auckland is over-rated, and is not a world class city by any measure, you want world class cities, look over the ditch. Houses are only expensive here because people don't know how to make money any other way. If I didn't have commitments in NZ I wouldn't even be here, way better places today, thankfully because of the internet its really easy to do business overseas without actually being there.

Hopefully with the new "Super City" now being a reality,   the powers that be put something together that meshes all these issues together cohesively, otherwise urban sprawl will be just that. 

You are all in lala land if you think housing affordability levels in Auckland will get any better. Pressure will continue to be applied to the housing market as growth continues to be applied through the demands of new and existing housing stock by  immigrants. Do not be deluded into thinking the government will interject, or implement change policy sufficiently to change this situation as it wont happen. The only way this will work, is by being pragmatic about it, and plan accordingly for the future. Investment in infrastructure is critical otherwise, it will all and up as one big mess.

Enjoy the cahoticness of your existance, I am quite happy here on the Kapiti Coast - for the time being.

Churr churr

You guys are in lala land here (or smoked some serious stuffs) - everyone demands for more govt spending,better transport system, more afforable housing, more lands to build, pay less tax, pay less rates, don't sell lands for foreigners ...

Hello we only got just over 4 millions people and pay moderate amount of tax..  where do we get more money to do these stuffs?  Oh yes and some even complained about having more people coming from other countries..  please don't compare us to some European countries with the smae population - they have a thing called EU and they subsidy each other.

Have updated with second report on 20-40 yr olds' home ownership rates falling most in NZ between 1986 and 2006.

Wonder if that's keeping Bill English awake at night?

Cheers

Alex

I wish I had time to make my usual arguments.

But I am losing heart. The government doesn't need to do anything Hugh wants simply because the most voters are so blooming ignorant (some of the regular contributors on here are a good guide) and the media is such a bunch of incompetents and ideological sell-outs.

NZ is on its way to becoming the Cuba of the South Pacific and nothing is going to stop it now. The brightest people have all gone, and the remaining few are about to.

I am concentrating my efforts now, on international academic discussion groups where urban planning policies are fairly discussed and future directions are influenced. I have high hopes that the councils in more and more metros in the USA are now waking up to the fact that Texan planning is the future, not Californian or Oregonian planning. There are signs of academic awakening in Britain and Europe too - they've been doing this stuff the longest and have the longest evidence trail to analyse.

Look at the dreadful hovels in Pommyland that people pay hundreds of thousands of poonds for. That's our future. They might have "got it". But NZ is turning into the international loony Green poster child, where tourists will come to peer at the quaint, backward conditions we will all be living in in wonderful, "sustainable" poverty.

Looks like even the Treasury in Aussie has started ringing alarm bells about THEIR housing bubble:

http://www.unconventionaleconomist.com/2010/11/australian-treasury-calls-housing.html

Better late than never I suppose, but there is such a thing as "too late".

Oh for some officials this awake over here.

But remember "PhilBest" said this, and this is not the first time I have said this. There will turn out to have been a lot of smart money "shorting" Aussie banks with big mortgage exposure, and if possible, the mortgage backed securities themselves. Things are not really all that different to what they were in California. We are just a whole lot more ignorant in this part of the world. We just don't call it "sub-prime", although our first home buyer households are paying around 70% of their incomes in mortgage servicing. I read something recently from the USA saying that anything over 30% represents "sub prime".

The "Tea Party" movement now has "Smart Growth" in its sights. Good for them.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/11/tea-party-agenda-21-un-sustaina…



Bear in mind that this is a typical nasty, sneering far-left comment on the Tea Party movement. In fact, the way I read it, the "Tea Party" movement is to be commended for getting "Smart Growth" on the agenda for some genuine public debate at long last. The unelected urban planners have had it their way for too long.  I wish we had a conservative/free market political movement half as active, intelligent and well informed in this part of the world.

I am also coming to the conclusion that all those "Neanderthal" American conservatives have instincts that are what has made America a great nation; and leftwing liberalism is not going to wreck the USA that easily after all. They might need to cut California out of the Union, though. The strains to Union that are occurring between the likes of California and Texas are like those occurring between Greece and Germany in the EU, only worse in some ways, because California is so much bigger than Greece.

Read all about Texas HERE:

http://texanomics.blogspot.com/

Etc, etc, etc.

Visit the site and read it yourself. Texas - the living proof against failed leftist politics.