FOREIGN ‘FRIGHT’

Jane Clifton is mistaken when she reports the ASB Bank as showing the true proportion of “foreigners” buying New Zealand houses is 11-20%, rather than the 3% Statistics NZ gives ( Politics, July 7).

Rightly or wrongly, the Government is worried about overseas buyers outbidding locals for houses. That’s precisely what Statistics NZ has reported as making up 3% of sales. It also reported the makeup of the remaining 97%. It’s these figures that the ASB used in a newsletter and that were widely misreported.

Here’s how the sales break down: 3% are non-resident, non-citizen – that, is truly overseas people; 10% are trusts and businesses – the

ASB thought overseas beneficiaries of these would be closer to 0% than 10%; 8% are non-citizens, but New Zealand residents – these may be recent arrivals, even temporary workers, or long-term and permanent migrants who never bothered to get citizenship or whose originating nation prevents dual citizenship; the rest are citizens.

If we accept the ASB’s view about trusts and businesses, 3% plus 0% still leaves us with only 3% of houses being bought by people overseas.

To get any higher than that, you would have to define “foreign” to include at least a subset of residents.

And then what? Do we prevent residents from buying houses even when we know discrimination exists in the rental market? And what do we do when the shifting demand to the rental market pushes rents up?

The eagerness with which the media jumped on the non-story and how loosely the term “foreigner” was thrown around were distressing even to this citizen.

Sam Warburton

The New Zealand Initiative (Wellington)