[Ab]

http://www.metromag.co.nz/editors-bl...rty-challenge/

Here’s a checklist. It’s not exhaustive.

• Remove all of property’s taxation advantages. Stand by for howls of outrage from baby boomers.

• Overhaul building costs, in particular to undermine profiteering over materials and to encourage prefabrication and other efficiencies. Stand by for fierce lobbying from everyone in the construction industry who benefits from building houses in the expensive way they do it now.

• Develop incentives to encourage the scaling up of small and mid-size construction companies. Stand by for complaints from those that are already big.

• Speed up (and make easier) the consent processes for developers, designers and builders who are committed to environmentally smart solutions – in location, construction, energy use and more. Stand by for a battle on two fronts: from those who want to gut the RMA altogether and from nimbys.

• Commit to affordable housing within existing population centres and along major public transport corridors. Stand by for complaints for everyone with a vested interest in greenfields development (including existing land-bankers, ticky-tacky housing developers and motorway construction companies). Also nimbys.

• Overhaul education and trade training to produce a larger and more appropriately skilled construction workforce. Stand by for the angst from institutions currently producing too many lawyers, PR “executives” and graphic designers, and too few carpenters.

• Remove New Zealand’s near-unique appeal as a place for overseas investors to buy property, by making it illegal to own land unless you are a citizen or resident. And do it in such a way that no one is demonised by virtue of their ethnicity. Stand by for a full dose of liberal fury nonetheless.

• Created a publicly available backdated register of property ownership, so we can have well-informed debates about demographic and investment trends of all kinds. Stand by for the rage of privacy advocates, including those who are keen to keep the truth about their property transactions obscured.

edit update: also

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=11481506

The Barfoot and Thompson staffer who leaked real estate data to the Labour Party has been fired, the Herald understands.
...
Labour's housing spokesman Phil Twyford, who released the data to the Herald, said he would not comment until Barfoot and Thompson had released the details of its investigation.