House prices: plea to unlock the land
Page 1 of 2 5:00AM Wednesday June 20, 2007
By Anne Gibson
Expanding urban boundaries is a common theme in submissions to the home affordability inquiry. Photo / Dean Purcell
"Buy land, they're not making it anymore," said writer Mark Twain.
Yet some submissions being made at Parliament this month are calling for councils to stretch city boundaries so more folk can live on the fringes.
Real estate investors want more land to develop, unions want higher wages so people can afford houses, builders say they're hamstrung by red tape when trying to build and the Reserve Bank wants a capital gains tax to cool the market.
These are some of the suggestions made in papers prepared for the parliamentary inquiry on housing affordability.
The Property Council, representing investors with interests worth $20 billion, wants zoning restrictions around city boundaries lifted.
The Council of Trade Unions, representing 39 unions with 350,000 members, wants higher wages and more state subsidies to help people buy their first homes.
Registered Master Builders, with 1780 member companies representing 65 per cent of the annual dollar spend in the industry, says chippies want more sections and less red tape.
The Reserve Bank wants a capital gains tax on rental properties when they are sold, and the Government to consider changing its management of immigration.
Demographia, which surveys housing affordability annually, wants land on urban boundaries freed up for housing, saying land scarcity is the single most critical component in the affordability crisis.
Hugh Pavletich, a Christchurch developer and co-author of the Demographia survey with Wendell Cox of Missouri, said he was heartened to see many of the submissions to the inquiry had criticised restrictive urban boundaries.
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