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Thank goodness for Auckland City’s urban planners. Although the rest of us are unable to see past Auckland’s housing crisis, it is reassuring that they remain committed to a loftier vision. Read more

In New York City, a bottle placed on the curbside for recycling can find its way back into a convenience store, relabeled and refilled, within thirty days. In Auckland City, a bottle’s destiny is not so enduring. Read more

Auckland’s housing crisis produces some strange side effects. One of them is that the word ‘boarding school’ might acquire a new meaning. Read more

In the mid-2000s, when inflation was running hot and the Reserve Bank was having a tough time keeping things under control, the former Business Roundtable’s Roger Kerr warned that monetary policy needed mates. Government made the Reserve Bank’s job even harder by running expansionary fiscal policy when labour markets were tight and inflation was a problem. Read more

Last week saw a rare conjunction. Almost all the political parties agreed that Auckland’s artificial rural urban boundary had to be lifted to free up land for housing development. Read more

Amid the rancorous debate about whether a land tax should be imposed on non-resident property buyers it is vital to remember what caused New Zealand’s housing crisis in the first place: a sustained lack of land supply. Far too often in the discussion on how to cool Auckland’s white-hot housing market the focus strays from this fundamental fact, and falls on demand-side factors. Read more

Replace the word London for Auckland and you could be forgiven for thinking that The Economist was writing a lament about housing affordability in New Zealand’s biggest city. In an article titled “Little London”, the magazine notes that soaring property prices are dragging on the city’s economy. Read more