Documentary confronts housing crisis

A recent documentary answers why house prices have soared while home ownership rates have fallen

Documentary confronts housing crisis
Deregulation of the banking system, successive governments and immigration are the key factors contributing to the housing crisis, according to a recent documentary by an investigative journalist.
Bryan Bruce, a veteran journalist, investigated the housing crisis in the documentary 'Who Owns New Zealand Now?', according to a Fairfax article.

Signs of why house prices have soared while rate of home ownership fell, Bruce said, can all be traced back to the 1980s and '90s, when New Zealand switched from a regulated economy to a market-driven one.

Fairfax said, Bruce pointed out that successive governments have embraced competition and that deregulation of the banking system has had a "dramatic effect on who gets to own their own home today, and who doesn't”.

Another factor that contributed to the housing crisis was immigration – with an absence of data and just of a lot of anecdotal evidence, the report said.

“The Government is not collecting information on who is buying how much of New Zealand, where, what kind of value or even where these people are coming from,” Bruce said.

The documentary said there are alternatives to traditional home ownership, and New Zealand needs to embrace - schemes like institutional investment from sources, such as KiwiSaver and the NZ Super Fund and ACC.

But first, Bruce said, we need data. Then we can create the "essential" infrastructure, the Fairfax report said.


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