The latest migration figures don't help. In the year to November 30, New Zealand's annual net migration hit 63,700 - a new record.
Of them, 47 per cent - 29,700 - settled in Auckland. Add natural growth of around 14,000 a year, and is it any wonder that Auckland house prices continue to rocket skyward. On Monday, we read that flats in Eden Terrace had jumped 60 per cent in price in the year to November, up from around $300,000 to $500,000.
In Orakei, homes were up 40 per cent to $1.67 million while across on the North Shore, Murrays Bay properties were up 44 per cent, to an average of $1.4 million.
Quotable Value's November house price index recorded "massive" home valuations rises across the region, averaging 24.4 per cent in the past year to a new high of $918,153.
Of course Santa's problem will be where to erect the flat-pack housing.
Over the past 20 years of production, Ikea's "affordable" kitset apartment blocks and terraced housing have developed an expanding market in the Nordic countries and Britain.
Obviously, in Europe, governments have been switched on enough to appreciate the need for adequate supplies of affordable land to accommodate growth.
Here, all we got was the Auckland Housing Accord and 97 Special Housing Areas which, three years on, has resulted in a anti-climactic slow dribble of completed houses.
The SHA classification has delivered a windfall profit to the land-bankers who succeeded in having their properties reclassified.
Andrea Rush from Quotable Value confirmed this in the Herald recently, as did Barfoot & Thompson agent Ian Croft, who said properties designated SHA had risen by up to 40 per cent in value.
Admittedly, the Government's intention was in the right place. But instead of fast-tracking affordable housing, SHA has just given land-bankers another avenue for self-enrichment.
If the Government had meant business it would have bought the land at the current market price under the Public Works Act, as it does when it wants to build a motorway. Providing affordable housing, after all, is surely as important a function of government as building another transport corridor.
And before anyone starts pointing the red flag in my direction, this is not a radical idea in the rest of the civilised world. Even our Australian neighbours do it.
The Productivity Commission - hardly a nestbed of recidivist commies - has been badgering the Government to take control of the situation for ages.
Its June housing report repeated earlier calls for the creation of an urban development authority to acquire, plan and build - with private enterprise involvement - large-scale housing developments.
Chairman Murray Sherwin said an aggressive approach was needed to tackle the crisis. This echoed a 2012 recommendation by the commission to Auckland Council.
In 2006, 2008 and 2009, similar recommendations were made by the Government's Urban Taskforce, the Ministry of Environment and the inter-agency Sustainable Urban Development Unit.
The Housing New Zealand subsidiary, the Hobsonville Land Company, is the perfect home-grown template, a public-private development partnership model that ticks all the boxes, except one. Speed.
Established 16 years ago to build 3000 homes on the old air force base, it pops out houses about as fast as a panda produces pups. The last of the homes will not be available until 2023.
As the Productivity Commission points out, Auckland needs "the equivalent of 11 more Hobsonvilles immediately, and a further four completed each year".
Come in Santa.
