FOMO, messy markets, and the future

 Analysis – In a paper published earlier this year called ‘The mess we’re in’ – a dive into the Auckland housing market from the construction industry’s point of view – AUT Professor John Tookey says one solution to the bubble and market pressures around the country is to get ahead of demand.

Sounds simple.

NOTE: FOMO (fear of missing out)

“What is politically difficult to accept is simple to state. Improving housing affordability equates to reducing housing values,” Professor Tookey says.

By reducing values, he means your house. Not the 10,000 that officially need to be built every year to accommodate a rising population, a rising population that’s mostly Kiwis, New Zealanders returning from elsewhere, and some pesky foreigners. (Disclaimer: the writer is a migrant and GFC economic refugee.)

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Photo: RNZ / Diego Opatowski

One of the reasons for the mess is that for years policy-makers passed legislation incentivising property ownership, and ordinary Kiwis with their money locked in the one asset everyone agreed on – property – have been busily selling properties to one another, buying to let, and driving up prices and rents.

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Source: RNZ John Edens, Digital Journalist [email protected]