Housing hell

There was a time when governments cared about the principle of housing affordability – when housing was what you lived in, rather than an investment class.

Auckland homeowners have become millionaires overnight through no particular skill or agency of their own, at tremendous long-term cost to the community. Spiralling house prices are the direct result of foreign and local property investors. They buy in Auckland because New Zealand has some of the loosest ownership and tax laws in the developed world.

Removing foreign buyers from the market and introducing a capital gains tax is a way forward. Unfortunately the current Government has too many property investors among its own ranks to make that change!

Auckland’s housing crisis has been directly caused by government policy (or lack of) and while this has made existing homeowners incredibly wealthy, an entire generation is permanently priced out of the market. Robust wealth is created through business and innovation and not by padding the coffers of today’s property owners. Dr Rob Evison, Mt Maunganui What a revelation! We have been lambasted for months with the Government’s opinion that there is no housing crisis and house prices are certainly not being inflated by foreign buyers: an opinion favoured especially by Prime Minister John Key and Finance Minister Bill English.

But wait, we are now told by English that controlling immigration might affect housing prices. Does this mean immigration has in fact been driving houseprice inflation? Does our Finance Minister actually understand the real meaning of what he is saying? Gerald McCully, Auckland