Kiwis need to consider ditching 'quarter-acre dream' to buy housing, expert says

January 24, 2020

Vanessa Taylor of realestate.co.nz says quarter-acre sections are only going to get more expensive.

An expert says Kiwi ingenuity should also lead New Zealanders to give up on the "Kiwi Dream", if they want to buy a home.

The average property sale price in New Zealand has recently risen to $700,000 for the first time, and realestate.co.nz spokesperson Vanessa Taylor says its a problem with supply and demand.

Ms Taylor, speaking this morning to TVNZ 1's Breakfast, said Kiwis need to get creative.

"If we look at Kiwis in our ingenuity, we are certainly looking at other ways to get into the property market," Ms Taylor said.

"The reason we have these prices continue to rise is that just before the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) hit, we were in building mode - residential property was continuing to grow.

"We weren't quite keeping up with population growth then, but we were trying to do our best.

"Then the GFC hit and we actually stopped, and so now we're actually seeing a bit of a hangover from those three or four years where we stopped."

Ashley Church shared his insight into the survey with TVNZ1’s Breakfast.

Ms Taylor said the issue in New Zealand isn't really getting enough land, but one bottleneck is the consents process for local councils.

"The local councils - if they wanted to focus on getting a more efficient way through, I do think that's something we could improve on."

New Zealanders were increasingly moving away from the "Kiwi Dream" - a quarter-acre family home - in favour of housing which worked for them and their situation.

"The reality of it is, I think we've got a job to do here in New Zealand - to change our psyche," Ms Taylor said.

"Our lives have changed ... we're busier, we want to spend less time in cars, we don't necessarily want to mow our lawns on the weekend.

"I think there has been that Kiwi dream of having a quarter-acre block or a back garden and I think there is a shift in that.

"I think 2020 is going to see the market come with greater solutions for the key things that people want."

The average asking price is going through the roof in some parts of the country.

Ms Taylor said New Zealand's home building rates were lower than they should be for a number of reasons, including builders not working efficiently.

"At the moment in New Zealand, we do have an inefficient model, we have got a lot of builders building 3-4 homes per year and that's just not an efficient way to get scale.

"If you look at our friends in Japan, they've been doing the modular housing build for decades - about 50 per cent of homes in Japan are actually built in modular means - it's kind of a kitset, its built in a factory and then shipped out to be built."


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