Land supply key to improving housing affordability – English
Proposes time limit on some RMA consents.
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Hawke’s Bay
The government is to focus on speeding up the resource consent process and increasing land supply in an effort to make housing more affordable.
Finance minister Bill English has agreed with the Productivity Commission's earlier assessment that houses can be made more affordable.
He has issued the government's response to the commission's report.
"High house prices matter because many New Zealanders spend a large portion of their incomes on housing and that has helped fuel household debt and contribute to damaging imbalances in the economy," Mr English says.
The four key priorities for the government include:
- Increasing land supply. This will include more greenfields and brownfields developments, and allow further densification of cities, where appropriate.
- Reducing delays and costs of RMA processes associated with housing. This includes introducing a six-month time limit on council processing of medium-sized consents.
- Improving the timely provision of infrastructure to support new housing. This will include considering new ways to co-ordinate and manage infrastructure for subdivisions.
- Improving productivity in the construction sector. This includes an evaluation of the Productivity Partnership’s progress in achieving a 20% increase in productivity by 2020.
Prime minister John Key has warned this will not be a quick fix, as existing home owners may become understandably annoyed if their homes have been devalued overnight
Blair Cunningham
Mon, 29 Oct 2012
Mon, 29 Oct 2012
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