Want a laugh?

[Nick G]

Incomes, a huge component in the price of housing, either direct (labour) or indirect (labour for suppliers) are going to go up heaps and that's going to make housing more affordable because housing won't get more expensive to compensate.

That means council fees are going down, yeah nah.

And costs for fittings and materials are going down, yeah nah.

And land is getting cheaper, yeah nah.

Brought to you by the group running the country.

[donna]

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

cheers,

Donna

[Perry]

Rivmetick - Whazzat?

But to get to that level, he says wages would need to rise and the increases in house prices would need to soften.

Weasels and weasel words aplenty.

Note the "wages would need to rise" compared to "increases in house prices would need to soften."

Not "wages would need to rise" compared to "increases in house prices would need to drop."

Nor "wages would need to harden" compared to "increases in house prices would need to soften."

More weasel stuff:

But remember just a couple of generations ago, a single income household on an unskilled wage could afford to buy their own home, raise a family and pay that home off in the space of two or three generations.

And they did that in single-glazed, uninsulated, open-fire warmed houses with wooden floors.

Both the Housing and the Finance Minister won’t say house prices should fall – instead, they are relying on a significant increase in average wages to reach the target.

What no W'gton woodenhead wants to confront is the obvious question:

How can increasing the cost of home building by increasing the number of gummint-mandated construction components and wage costs of the builders' labour make houses cheaper or more affordable?

Gummint policies are what Dhil Twitford was really referring to when he said:

That’s how bad things have got.

Only in the vacuous cranial cavities and fantasy world of the W'gton woodenheads does increasing labour cost not result in the flow-on increase in price of all products and services of that labour.

Bob was so right when he observed that:

This ignorance may not be confined to housing.

The ignorance is simply breath-taking.

[Wayne]

So we should force wages down and that would solve any affordability issue?

[Perry]

Notice how productivity never gets mentioned?

As idjits like the reds keep forcing up the cost of human labour, watch the march of robotics increase in cadence.

Morons, all.

[Wayne]

Notice how productivity never gets mentioned?

As idjits like the reds keep forcing up the cost of human labour, watch the march of robotics increase in cadence.

Morons, all.

So we should reduce the cost of human labour and that would solve it all?
Robotics increases productivity.
One of the reasons for low productivity in NZ is because labour is cheap.
When it gets expensive or hard to come by then productivity increases.

[Perry]

Notice how productivity never gets mentioned?
As idjits like the reds keep forcing up the cost of human labour, watch the march of robotics increase in cadence.
Morons, all.

So we should reduce the cost of human labour and that would solve it all?
Robotics increases productivity.
One of the reasons for low productivity in NZ is because labour is cheap.
When it gets expensive or hard to come by then productivity increases.

I disagree.

If NZ labour was cheap, why all the off-shoring of jobs? Except politicians, of course.

There's no such thing as a "free lunch."

Someone, somewhere, sometime, pays.

The 'consumer' at the end of the chain is usually the one that pays.

Fuel tax additions, or whatever: the increases always filter through to the end consumer.

Wait and see what the Auckland fuel tax rape does to the prices of most everything in that area.

Tradies call out fees would be one thing to watch.

Together with increased income tax, such things will always and ever consume the artificial minimum wage increase.

And then some.

Few - in any - economists grasp that.

Absolutely no W'gton woodenheads do.

Not a one.

Morons, all.

[WINZ]

Incomes, a huge component in the price of housing, either direct (labour) or indirect (labour for suppliers) are going to go up heaps and that's going to make housing more affordable because housing won't get more expensive to compensate.

That means council fees are going down, yeah nah.

And costs for fittings and materials are going down, yeah nah.

And land is getting cheaper, yeah nah.

Brought to you by the group running the country.

A bigger component is credit (and the cost thereof), which determines the affordability metrics relating to income. Low-cost/high availability credit facilitates higher home prices.

Credit is tightening and the associated costs are rising so this may put a dampener on housing prices, regardless of other movements in fundamentals (immigration, demographics, income levels, build costs).

[GLin]

The amount of red tap to get resource consent and building consent in Auckland is just crazy.

One of my students has waited 12 months to get resource consent and building consent just to turn a home and income 3 + 2, into 4 + 2 + 4 in Pakuranga Heights... by the time the conversion is complete and CCC issued, that would be 16 months in total...

Bigger subdivisions will take 18-24 months to turn around the project...