Editorial: Grant Robertson's carrot and stick approach to cooling the housing market

Editorial

EDITORIAL

Nearly a century ago, a young American worker became the harbinger of doom when JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy, said he knew to bail on the 1929 bull sharemarket because a shoeshine boy gave him stock tips.

In a modern vein, who hasn't heard the latte machine conversations about how much people's houses have gone up? How Gisborne and West Coast prices rose more than 30 per cent in the last year? People expressing worry about themselves or their kids' chances of owning?

The shoeshine tipline is still humming, particularly in Tāmaki Makaurau, despite new loan to value ratio lending rules being reimposed from March 1.

The Real Estate Institute released figures last week showing New Zealand's median prices rose 22.8 per cent from $635,000 last February to $780,000 last month, setting a new national high. Auckland is also at another all-time high. Its median rose 24.3 per cent from $885,000 to $1,100,000.

It's not limited to big centres: 12 out of 16 regions and 37 districts also set new records, the REINZ noted.

People tell of being out-bid at auctions, of the struggle to buy, of their kids' plight and the effects of landlord reform swinging the balance so hard in tenants' favour and resulting in pre-February 11 rental housing evictions and sales.

One Herald reader told of bidding nearly $3 million at auction with no trading bank pre-approval. In desperation, that person agreed to pay double valuation after being repetitively out-bid but is now faced with higher-interest mezzanine funding to settle.

The Reserve Bank is acutely aware of our property addiction, because housing is a central part of our economy, making up almost three-quarters of total household assets.

We know we're out of step globally. The ratio is higher than other advanced economies where other types of financial assets play a greater role in retirement saving. Our one comfort right now is KiwiSaver.

Housing debt is around 27 per cent of the value of the housing stock and mortgages make up just over half of total banking system lending. So housing is a significant source of risk to our economy and our banks.

A state house shortage means some tourists can't get motels because so many are filled with state stays, a record 22,000 people awaiting a state place.

Even New Zealand's wealthiest developer, Ted Manson, told in the Herald last week he had given up building new state houses in Auckland towers, buying $60,000 12-seater vans for schools instead.

Successive governments have talked about a need to boost housing affordability but none has shown any urgency to do anything that might cause prices to fall. Even now, Labour talks of "sustained moderation" to reassure the constituency that it wants nothing more than for house prices to settle at their current levels.

How, then, might this Government move next week? Finance Minister Grant Robertson spoke last month of giving consideration to "broader advice about how to cool the housing market".

The Reserve Bank must now consider the housing market in monetary and financial policy decisions after changes to its monetary policy committee's remit.

In February, Robertson told an event hosted by the BNZ in Wellington the Government would take "bold" steps to "tilt the balance more towards first-home buyers, while also incentivising more investment in the construction of homes".

Robertson has now further revealed two new areas of focus he wants the Reserve Bank to look at - debt-to-income ratios and interest-only mortgages - in order to understand the extent of risk those mortgages pose and whether restrictions should apply such as in Australia and elsewhere.

The package of housing policies the Government is due to unveil next week will include a "mixture of both incentives to go [invest] elsewhere and disincentives within the housing system", he told the Herald this week.

That's the key to what will happen this week - and the best advice any shoeshine boy can offer right now.