55% 41% 4%

Auckland plans allowing house construction to occur throughout the city have been a failure. “We need urban development at scale, by way of a satellite city to the south linked to the city by rail and high-density development centred on rail and busway stations,” he says. “The faster we build houses on current plans the worse our transport system will become.”

“As both Bill English and Phil Twyford understand (and of course David Seymour), the outrageous prices of housing in most New Zealand cities are a direct result of restraints on the availability of land, and the way we have chosen to fund infrastructure,” says ICBC chairman Don Brash.

A major banking boss remarked: “The current LVR restrictions have seen many mum and dad investors leave the Auckland market, which is good. First home buyers have come back into the market in the suburbs that were having their prices increased previously by those investors.”

Some of the lowest scoring options to constrain house price growth included extending the current two-year “bright line” test (32.4 per cent) and introducing a capital gains tax (27.6 per cent) — both of which are likely outcomes of a tax working group under a Labour-led government.

“We need to fix the tax arrangements in New Zealand that favour investment in houses over investment in productive businesses,” says Carolyn Luey, MYOB GM, Enterprise Solutions & New Zealand.

This year’s survey reveals that retaining workers due to housing affordability is becoming of increased concern (43 per cent of the CEOs responded yes, compared to 39 per cent last year).

Although most said it is only an issue in Auckland and Queenstown, several said they anticipated this would be an increasing concern in coming years. — Tim McCready