This is good news for housing affordability. Smaller, denser, inner city housing will allow for the building of many more lower cost housing units, both for rent and purchase.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for councils to actually allow consents based on these new initiates. In my experience it can take years for council to adopt new policies.

Only the supply for more affordable housing will slow the rise in house prices and rents. Policies won’t do it, more taxes won’t do it, more meetings and grants won’t do it. Only supply. That means developers need to get consents for smaller, denser housing and then they need the materials and people to do the work. Right now we haven’t got enough materials or enough staff, and the councils are understaffed. We lodged a consent recently and were immediately given a S37 notice. That means our resource consent will take at least 40 working days instead of 20. And that’s just the beginning, then we need a subdivision consent, an engineering consent and a building consent.

Apparently the shortage of council planners is due to many council staff leaving for Housing NZ, who can now issue their own consents. They are poaching council staff by paying more and the staff don’t have to deal with the public. This will have a negative affect on first home buyers as there will be more social housing built and less affordable housing.

Don’t expect an explosion of new housing in Hamilton anytime soon.

John Kenel
Assured Property

Source: NZHerald

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