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A property developer says the housing affordability crisis in New Zealand could be solved by building a large number of high-quality houses.
The Wellington Company managing director Ian Cassels told Parliament's commerce select committee inquiry into housing affordability today that house prices were far too high and it was "intolerable".
"New Zealand appears to me to be rapidly turning into an old man's club, each of us clutching our recently arrived private capital gains as the youth slowly gets burnt off the back of the property train."
He said New Zealand needed "repetition", which meant building a lot of houses that were high quality - had good insulation and were built with permanent material.
Mr Cassels said this could keep the price of houses down.
He said New Zealanders did not have a long term view of houses, which meant there were not enough high-quality houses - " we are still scared someone might come along and turn the lights off".
He said someone needed to produce up to 5000-10,000 houses fairly quickly - with support from national and local government, so that fees did not exist and the process was simple.
Mr Cassels said in some cases the land would be leased on "reasonably favourable rates".
He said his company was looking at building two-bedroom houses with a "floating room" - a study, or a spare room for grandma.
He said they would not all be in one neighbourhood but spread out in groups of 10.
Mr Cassels said the objection could be that they would all look the same, but he said "people loved their Volkswagens and Morris Minors".
"If a first house was high quality and recognised as a 'classic' - if it was warm, cheap to run and close to the city - wouldn't we have succeeded?"
The committee also heard from Grant Morris, a senior law lecturer at Victoria University.
He said the problem was a "generational issue".
Dr Morris said people under 35, who were most affected by the housing crisis, did not have an active voice in the issue.
When the select committee has completed its inquiry findings it will present a report to Parliament.
This week the Government introduced a bill to give local councils the power to ensure developers provided cheap housing in their developments.
- NZPA
