Sorted for Housing and Wizz

Housing: how the hell did it come to this? Once upon a time in the 50s, a newly-installed Minister for Housing would survey the drab features of his portfolio (for it was surely a he), seething with resentment that the hoped-for reshuffle riches of a glamorous stint in Foreign Affairs had not come his way. Aside from the occasional controversy around compulsory acquisition, nothing was less sexy, less controversial. You just had to make sure enough state houses were built, and a non-crazily priced market would take care of the remaining demand. Easy.

Now, well, it would have been better if Jacinda had declared a housing emergency rather than one on climate change. For those Kiwis who want the financial and social comfort of owning their own home, but who simply cannot, the sense of drowning while others are happily seated on buoyant rafts as the tide rises, must be wretchedly infuriating.

Economists like to warn sagely that this is an unsustainable bubble; that it is ridiculously overheated; that if we don’t do something planned to address supply and demand, a brutal correction will do it for us. In a morass of lies, empty promises and theoretical bullshit, this is the biggest whopper of them all. House prices are never coming down.

Investing in housing: a bigger high than heroin and you never come down.

Yes, yes, yes, I know: bubbles always burst. Think tulips, the South Sea Company, Enron and Lehman Brothers. Yet all of these bubbles were driven by illusory demand. Tulips are not poppies or crocuses, rich in expensive heroin or saffron. As soon as enough investors reached their emperor’s new clothes moment and realised that tulips are just moderately pretty flowers, the whole rotten edifice of mad speculation collapsed, spectacularly, in 1637. Enron’s stock was vastly overpriced because it was essentially lying about its profitability, in a sophisticated and confusing way that fooled many for a long time. And so it goes with housing, according to just about everybody: houses are overpriced.

But they are not. The value of anything is not about anything more intrinsic than the value people put on it. If someone bids $1m for a dilapidated shoebox in Auckland, that is what it is worth. The ‘lucky’ owners will not set foot in their new purchase and feel an immediate pang of buyer’s remorse, even if it is the doer-upper to crown all doer-uppers. They will feel a surging wave of relief that they have managed to land on the right side of the property-owning divide. They will renovate, decorate, invest and secure for the ultimate goal of property without cost in their dotage. And it is the height of hypocrisy for propertied politicians and commentators to suggest that this is wrong. It is arguably the simplest form of prudent and effective personal economics that a populace can manage. The only trouble is: fewer and fewer of us can afford to do it.

If you don’t believe me, ask Jacinda. When she says ‘sustained moderation’, she simply means she wants to stop prices accelerating out of control, not remaining static, or god forbid, falling. Her spin is an honest admission that Labour is already running the white flag at trying to curb exploding property prices.

A lot of policy solutions have focused on demand. This is a mistake. Demand for housing is as insatiable as a British prince at an Epstein party. Labour and the Greens have toyed with a capital gains tax, although the government has since ruled it out – a wise decision given that other countries with a capital gains tax like Australia are faced with similarly horrendous house prices. TOP’s property tax is the best of these proposed solutions, although their website wryly notes that it may only calm prices somewhat. Its best feature is that it spreads the tax base and encourages investment away from the sugar high of property. But it cannot address property inequality alone, because of the sheer determination of people to own their own home.

No. The elephant in the room is supply. There are not enough houses for people to buy in the most popular places to live. Pointing out that there are bargains to be had in Eketahuna and Twizel is less than useless (no offence to those fine places). Places are popular because they are rich in the jobs and amenities that existing property owners adore. And this is where the supposed welcoming friendliness of New Zealanders seems ugly and suspect. The chorus of disapproval when even the most modest housing development is mooted is nothing short of selfish and disgusting.

$150,000 in Eketahuna; $1.5m in Epsom

Choose from any of the following patronising tropes: the proposed dwellings are detrimental to the ‘character’ or ‘charm’ of the neighbourhood; the consultation process is inadequate (read: I didn’t have enough chance to rally all my bourgeois chums to write angry emails to councillors); there’s no housing shortage – it’s just those pesky Chinese buying everything, too many migrants (when they’re done stealing jobs from Kiwis), whining millenials who waste money on soy lattes when they could be saving for a deposit. Yada, yada, yada.

I’d respect them more if they were at least honest and just admitted that they wanted to protect their investment and ensure that the wrong people don’t move in, because that is what these ‘arguments’ amount to in a nutshell. Instead we get passive-aggressive spin.

If you’re reading this, and you’re a property owner like me, you have one shot at redemption. When the latest local district plan unveils a house building proposal in your suburb, instead of complaining, write emails in support. Go along to the public meetings and chastise and heckle your fellow boomers for their myopic selfishness. Wear T-shirts saying “Developers that build homes are sexy”. Or if you can’t quite stomach something so radical, at the very least please shut up.