The focus on the supply side alone is like analysing the All Blacks performance by only looking at the backline. Nothing proposed by the current crop of career politicians will change that. But the major cost of any new building is by far the cost of the land beneath it. Council processes, the Resource Management Act, infrastructure are certainly all issues that need to be tackled. DemographiaĬommentators and politicians continue to point to the the “supply side” – the roadblocks with building more houses. Instead the money has gone into bidding up the price of land. Sadly most of this money hasn’t been to improve the quality of our housing, a large proportion of it is still cold and damp. Kiwis have responded with gusto, putting more of our money into housing than any other country in the world. Since the late 1980s our tax system has favoured housing more than any other developed country in the world. As a country we have been training for this for many years. Unlike rugby, there should be no surprise at this housing result. It would be a bit like crashing out of the Rugby World Cup and then hiring the Portuguese coach to take over the All Blacks. Instead when it comes to housing we are fiddling at the edges and pinching ideas from the countries that are marginally better than us. Imagine if we got a similar result in the Rugby World Cup later this year? There would be outrage, and calls for a massive overhaul of the way we structure rugby in this country. We managed to snatch the wooden spoon from Australia and the United Kingdom, both of which incidentally have a Capital Gains Tax (excluding the family home). All of our housing markets were deemed “severely unaffordable”, with the median house costing more than six times the median household income. We are the worst in the developed world when it comes to housing affordability. The Demographia Housing Affordability Report released today shows our country is losing at housing. And overhauling the tax system has to be part of the change, write Geoff Simmons We need bold action, not tinkering at the edges. Today brings confirmation about the depth of the crisis in a global context.