+1 if the people of nz prefer to preserve their state of life over market demand that's their collective choice to make. Not everything in life must be ruled by a supply/demand curve
However, as whatever they're looking to buy has dropped as well they're no worse off, and given that they've almost certainly still made a tax free killing (unless they're very recent purchasers) they're probably still ahead.
"It is the government itself that is creating the problem,"
I don't agree.
The government should have never allowed non-citizens to buy property in the first place.
Zoning is not the issue, there's plenty of space, granted, they could change that if they had to.
Massive surpluses of cash from wealthy 1%-er foreigners is the issue really.
Here's an idea: you can't have 'free trade' if one side is willing to allow de-facto slavery, corruption and externalization of things like pollution etc..
Because that means jobs are lost in 'high regulation country A' and move to 'corrupt and low regulation country B' - particularly into the pockets of their 1%-ers who can then rule their own country, and then come ton country A where surpluses are more evenly distributed and also take over and use their wealth as leverage.
No.
Just like you need certain things in order to have a common currency - you need certain things for free trade.
We understand that 'strategic dumping' and 'government subsidies' are generally not allowed in 'free trade' - but we should be aware that 'government allowing pollution' etc. - is like a form of subsidy.
There is already a trade war with China, so it would be best if the West simply added a tariff for imports that reflected these things, and certainly had capital controls. Nothing heavy, but domestic property ownership should definitely be regulated as well.
> The government should have never allowed non-citizens to buy property in the first place.
Why allow citizens to leave the country while we are at it. Lets just close all the borderds, never allow foreigners in, or locals out. That is the recipe for economic prosperity!
You are forgetting the foreigners have let their cash into nz. They gave it to homeowners, to construcion companies, etc. Those in turn spend it and reinvest it locally.
Why not let foreigners pay our politicians to make legislation - the money goes to lawyers, consultants etc. i.e. right into the economy!
For the same reason we have borders, that we don't allow foreigners to buy some kinds of assets (i.e. wireless spectrum) - or do some kind of banking, own certain kinds of companies.
"No, it's Kiwis that will ultimately pay the price, as it's Kiwis that are getting screwed by unaffordable housing"
?
If you take away foreign investment in homes, then housing prices will be affordable.
The only way housing is not affordable otherwise is if there is 'bubble like activity' - like the Silicon Valley - and even then, this has a lot to do with foreign money flowing in, just as LP's and investors and not as home owners.
Point blank.
Toronto and Vancouver have massive foreign investment and have unaffordable homes.
Montreal - with similar economic conditions - has a little less immigration, and no foundation for Asian buyers - and guess what? It's super affordable.
Everywhere you see a lot of international speculation - you see affordability problems.
Ban foreign ownership of property unless it's commercial. There's absolutely no reason to be speculating with our homes.
FYI - this creates a serious problem: Toronto and Vancouver are Ponzi schemes - construction is a big part of the economy. If the zillions of homes stopped getting built, it would mean a 'reality based economy' that Canadians can't deal with - because we don't export valuable things and we are addicted to an ever-increasing number of warm bodies.
I think you've misunderstood the context of my comment, as it seems we agree. I'm saying that foreign speculation (and local speculation) are bad for Kiwis and should be acted against, so it seems we're in agreement.
My comment should be read in context as "No, it's Kiwis that will ultimately pay the price, as it's Kiwis that are getting screwed by unaffordable housing [caused by unfettered speculation, foreign and local]".
Person A has property and wants to sell it to person B, and person C wants to get the property at a lower price, so he forbids, by force, for person A to sell it to B.
Why do you think person C is getting screwed if A sells to B?
A thought experient: What if the landowners went the opposite way: property can only be sold to foreigners that are poorer than nzlanders. How would that go in this scheme of things.
The average price of property grows due to the additional demand from speculators, foreign and local, pushing up the price that C has to pay for any other property as well. It's not that complicated.
The primary purpose of housing is not to make people money, it's to house people. To serve that goal the lower the price is the better.
In that context it's clear that it's not the relative wealth, or even foreigner vs local that's the problem, it's speculation of any kind. So no, in your thought experiment it's no better to sell to foreign speculators regardless of their relative wealth.
A more interesting thought experiment is what happens in an economy when property speculation doesn't happen. House prices are lower, as demand is only from those that want to live in them and those that want to buy them to lease them out. With lower prices paid, there's more money (on average) in everyone's pockets - including those that rent, due to lower rental prices. This increase in money stimulates the economy, especially because most of the relative benefit accrues to those on lower incomes that spend most of their income to live. The economy is further benefited as much of the money that would have otherwise been dumped into non-productive real estate speculation instead flows into real investment.
The end result of discouraging property speculation is enormously beneficial to the country. Investors can speculate in the stock market or whatever else they like, because people don't live in shares, but the housing market exists to serve a purpose... and that purpose is not to make people money. That's an acceptable side effect so long as the primary purpose is fulfilled, but in NZ and AU it's failing.
Sure, there are a some that would be disadvantaged (new home buyers that end up in negative equity would also be in a bad situation) but they're dwarfed by those that benefit. A government with the nerve to crash the market through sane taxation would be able to reap a sufficient dividend to compensate those genuinely disadvantaged through negative equity, but it seems unlikely to happen.
> A government with the nerve to crash the market through sane taxation would be able to reap a sufficient dividend to compensate those genuinely disadvantaged through negative equity,
Ha!
The government is already collecting taxes because of home sales, it doesn't need to restrict it to solve it with its magical redistribution powers.
I don't think you understand the NZ situation very well; the government collects very little from property sales compared to most parts of the world, because there's no stamp duty and there's practically no capital gains tax.
That said, government revenue isn't even the problem, the excessive cost of housing is the problem.
The government is already interfering in the housing market by not taxing it at the same level as normal income; by making it tax advantageous to earn capital gains rather than by labour it pushes money into that market.
I'd prefer that they stopped messing with the housing market by treating it the same.
That’s not only attributable to this single item. There’s more such as exchange rate, salary levels and savings rates... that you’re stuck in an economic tarpit because you can’t speculate freely on housing (a primary necessity, btw) is a bit disingenuous
I'm not sure what sort of call you think I'm making here, it's just an observation of the economic effects. If you've bought a house to live in and the market doubles then halves again, you didn't benefit from the rise nor suffer from the fall. The main losers for a drop in prices are speculators, the main winners are practically everybody.
However home owners that are not actually benefiting from higher prices are incredibly attached to their paper gains and so any policy that threatens that will be wildly unpopular.
> I'm not sure what sort of call you think I'm making here, it's just an observation of the economic effects. If you've bought a house to live in and the market doubles then halves again, you didn't benefit from the rise nor suffer from the fall. The main losers for a drop in prices are speculators, the main winners are practically everybody.
A person that moves from one city to another, a person that sells their home to go back to renting, a software engineer thinking of moving to nz for a job has now found that he might never be able to purchase a home. The effects on pricing are not in par with wages: someone downsizing their home will get a smaller difference, and someone upsizing has found it is cheaper. Real estate agents income drops, tax revenue drops, tourism drops, etc.
There are more circumstances that we can imagine and my point is that is very presumptuous to think all those people have been benefited. Lots of landowners would vote against it, and they get no compensation from the ones that voted in favor of restrictions. The principle is not to benefit a majority. If we wanted to do that, we would just seize things from the top 49% and give it to the bottom 51%. There is no fundamental value satisfied here but the capacity of landowners to get use the government to tell what other people can or cant do with their property.
I reiterate: this is not about what nz wants, its about what some people want.
> If we wanted to do that, we would just seize things from the top 49% and give it to the bottom 51%.
No, we wouldn't, because that wouldn't achieve it.
> I reiterate: this is not about what nz wants, its about what some people want.
Reiterate all you like, you're attacking a strawman of your own creation because nobody is claiming otherwise.
> a software engineer thinking of moving to nz for a job has now found that he might never be able to purchase a home
It'll be a lot easier for him after a crash in the NZ property market, doubly so if foreign money is pushed out leading to drops in the NZD on top of the crash.
"If you've bought a house to live in and the market doubles then halves again, you didn't benefit from the rise nor suffer from the fall. The main losers for a drop in prices are speculators, the main winners are practically everybody."
This was what I said and you haven't actually disagreed with that anywhere. Yes, there are some that will be worse off, but increasing prices harm more than they help. Decreasing prices help more than they harm. It's not possible to do nothing, because doing nothing is doing something by continuing the current policy mix which inflates prices.
Crashing the market is the only way to improve the situation, but is politically untenable because people are very attached to paper gains even though they don't actually benefit from them. The end result will be an uncontrolled crash in the market that will leave the government with no revenue with which to help those that are harmed by a falling market; deliberately crashing prices through appropriate taxation would leave most unharmed, but would extract money from those that had benefited from a bad situation to help those that were really harmed.
It's the right thing to do, but no government will do it.
if only there was a process for collective decision making. perhaps we could delegate the more complex decisions to representatives chosen by the people using this process.
somebody should invent that.
(sorry for the snarky tone, but why is this even worthy of discussion here?)
The NIMBYism being referred to isn't about foreigners buying property, it's about zoning preventing higher density housing and therefore constraining supply.
If, not counting foreign buyers & speculators, low density housing is enough to meet demand and keep their country the way they like it, is it really NIMBY? Supply can only be considered constrained if there is excess demand.
Agreed that the relevant factor is the "real" demand absent the additional demand from speculation, but what reason do we have to think that "they" (which includes me) want it that way? Some do, and they're the ones with the money and influence, but "they" are not a monolith and have a range of opinions.
Auckland does appear to have legitimate supply constraints even absent demand (see articles with families living in tents, cars, etc in this first world country) and the geography does put constraints on efficient sprawl.
> existing property owners have more rights, incentives, and skin in the game then potential residents.
To be fair though "existing property owners" would also include people who own land in low-density-zoned areas and would like to build high-density housing on their property, but are prevented from doing so by neighboring property owners. It seems like their rights are also being infringed upon, no?
I would argue that zoning laws are not infringing on your rights as a property owner, no more than property taxes are an infringement. They are conditions of property ownership you agree to when proceeding with a transaction to acquire property.
And similarly, a condition of living near other people is that you must accept the presence of other people and infrastructure designed to accommodate them, even if you’d rather it wasn’t there. If you don’t want to be bothered by evidence of human habitation, move far away from the nearest human.
No, that is not the case. There are no requirements that we must have density, that we must accommodate everyone who wants to live on a block or in a zip code. That's not how property works.
Yes, there is a social contract that ends up codified into zoning/code, but that is governed by local government, which is governed by local property owners.
EDIT @ closeparen: I'm really sorry to hear that you feel that me supporting property rights are cartoon villainy. They are the foundation of modern civilization unfortunately.
EDIT 2: > What you're really talking about here is the political power over others that's embedded in property rights. This power is ultimately delegated to property owners by states, and the correct response (and what we're starting to see in CA) is the state seizing that power away from property owners and granting it to the population at large.
You're suggesting subverting democracy. Again, in violation with a democracy that is the foundation of modern civilization. To deprive someone of living in your own home is not a violation of their rights. Socialism I can support, but not communism (ie "the state seizing that power away from property owners and granting it to the population at large").
If you don't want to a skyscraper built on your land, don't sell your land.
Your neighbor's land isn't "your own home," it's his.
>You're suggesting subverting democracy.
Subverting a council of the landowning aristocracy (local city govt) with a democracy (state government).
>the foundation of modern civilization
Single-family-home zoning, FAR, parking minimums, sunlight plane, height limits, etc. have barely been around 100 years. Laws dictating that all places must look like modern American suburbs are certainly not "the foundation of modern civilization."
We're all going to learn some surprising things about "how property works" if cartoon villains such as you are permitted to ratchet up the homelessness rate towards 100% for much longer. In practice, though, responsible adults will step in long before that. California is already stripping local property owners of their anti-neighbor tools.
If we want to regulate population growth, fine. But we will have to start rationing birth the way we ration condos if it's really so important to us to avoid the scourge of homes.
EDIT: supporting property rights would be supporting the rights of property owners to build on their land. What you're really talking about here is the political power over others that's embedded in property rights. This power is ultimately delegated to property owners by states, and the correct response (and what we're starting to see in CA) is the state seizing that power away from property owners and granting it to the population at large.
I interpret the contrary of property rights. A land owner should decide what happens on his land, but what he can ask of his neighbors should be very limited. A person with a land in nz can't sell it to a foreigner, he is being deprived of his property rights.
I wouldnt be surprised if a measure like this ends up unconstitutional (no idea about nz constitution)
NZ doesn't have a real, single constitution, more a collection of case law[1].
I'd argue that if a person can no longer reasonably expect to buy a house in their own country then they're being deprived of their rights and that this is a more significant loss than others losing their "rights" to tax free profit from their property speculations.
Yes, every city where rents are high (so skyscrapers are economically viable) should be skyscrapers as far as the eye can see. The person who has the most stake in the land is the one who owns it, and that person should absolutely have the right to build a skyscraper on his land if he so chooses.
That's a false dichotomy; you can allow more density without skyscrapers as far as the eye can see.
The problem is hard because existing property owners have more rights, but those without have plenty of incentive and skin in the game too, as the overall cost of never owning a home is significant. Arguably the property owners should have less rights than they do when those rights are causing significant hardship and economic damage, which is the case.
New Zealand is geographically quite large (about the length of France and Spain joined together, and a little bit less wide) and we have half the population of London!
The land isn't owned collectively. It's owned by individuals. It seems strange to pass laws that say those individuals aren't allowed to sell to people that are willing to pay more money.
It only seems strange to you because you are probably American. Not everyone views land this individually. Nor does your approach make any sense. So you're against the government telling me I can't build a toxic waste dump on my land next to a school?
If you build your waste dump next to the school it creates negative externalities for the school. That's not the case for simply selling a piece of property to a willing buyer.
Buyers that don't actually live in the house and let it sit empty create a negative externality. Enough empty houses and you end up with empty neighborhoods.
(This happens with domestic buyers too but the problem of huge empty investment properties seems to have come along with foreign investment?)
" That's not the case for simply selling a piece of property to a willing buyer."
Not quite.
A wealthy citizen of a 3rd world country has used the fact that he can pollute and treat his staff like slaves - to make tons of money.
He can then go to another country wherein surpluses are spread more evenly - buy up property - and start to dominate those people economically as well.
One could make the cases that 'you cannot buy homes in our country unless you're a citizen of a country with similar rules regarding externalities like the environment, human rights' etc..
Because a lot of this money is coming from countries where all sorts of externalizations are made.
Same thing for manufacturing: we 'stop hiring' in locale A and go to 'locale B' where we can pollute and have slaves. You can't really look at it solely from the context of locale A.
For the same reason different nations have separate currencies, I think we need to separate domicile policy.
Nations have separate currencies because if they didn't some regions with experience inflationary monetary policies while others would experience deflationary ones. It would be impossible for central banks to do their jobs. You can see this in action in Europe with the Euro which was, and is, a bad idea.
" some regions with experience inflationary monetary policies while others would experience deflationary ones. "
Housing - and capital inflows/outflows - are primary drivers of inflation! (FYI I know housing is generally not included in inflation targets, but it really should be because it's where inflation can effectively be hidden).
Ergo - strongly related to the issue at hand.
Put simpler: those who come from countries with a different currency should not be able to buy residential property. :)
cultural factors may play a role, of course. quality of life is better when you have more things in common with your surroundings. this is about preferences, not perceived superiority though. at the very least you'd want your kids to have a common language with their classmates though.
Well, you've minimized the preceding argument while adding hyperbole to the responding argument. Of course we will agree with you that the straw man you have constructed is nonsense.
The parent arguments are both far more reasonable.
this doesn't qualify as a case of reductio ad absurdum because the original argument was not "why don't we allow duplexes?" but "why does the collective have a say in this at all?"
and the answer to that is "because of negative externalities"
American here, and I'm all in on the idea that we live in a society and our choices and decisions are constrained, to some extent, by the people around us.
The challenge for every generation and every society is to decide where to strike the balance between the individual and the group; it's never all one or the other, but always somewhere in between.
And I like this "your land isn't actually yours to do with whatever you please, no limits" idea. Count me in.
Why does that seem strange? All laws are the group imposing on the individual - what they aren't allowed to say, what they can't do, what they have to do, who they need to hire, where they can dig, when they are allowed to build, etc. None of that is far from "who isn't allowed to buy."
Ya, but most of those laws are about protecting the rights of individuals. I can't hit you because you have a right to bodily autonomy. What's being protected here?
The overall well being of the society as a whole. Plenty of laws have causes as vague even if you don't realize it is so and you arguably can't build a functioning society without laws stemming from vague but significant causes.
You don't have a right to buy a house at a particular price.
If someone else is willing to pay more the seller should have the opportunity to sell it to them. These laws privilege the desires of some buyers over both the desires of sellers and non-native buyers.
Not every sell is equal if you look at it like at social contract. A family buying a house is different from investors looking to park their money.
It looks like ban will apply to non-residents rather than non-native. If you're non resident, why do you want to buy? Rent to check out the city, get residency which you'd need to live in a country anyway, then buy.
> You don't have a right to buy a house at a particular price.
I never said that I did.
> If someone else is willing to pay more the seller should have the opportunity to sell it to them. These laws privilege the desires of some buyers over both the desires of sellers and non-native buyers.
And if the areas in question had been rezoned to increase supply instead of reducing demand, that would have privileged the desires of a different group of people.
All laws privilege a certain set of desires over other sets of desires.
Why shouldn't people who live in an area have the right to decide how they want to collectively structure their lives and economics?
Housing is a human right, and lots of US cities have all kinds of regulations around affordable housing. I think we're not far at all from "you do have the right to buy a house at a particular price," we just dress it up in fancier language.
Because we’re not trading figurines or pretty pebbles here, but homes, a Primary Necessity that we humans need for survival.
Therefore we need to consider other subtleties to the act of trading such assets: how are my assets impinging on other assets nearby? Is it butt-ugly, does it fit the local decor, does it drive insane density in the neighborhood, does it drive prices displacing neighbors at an unsustainable pace, does it disrupt the local community, anonymizing neighborly relations, does it damage residents’ way of life?
Some people are better than others because they are born closer. Let the others burn because as part of the ultra rich (almost all NZ people) I want to be richer and this seems to be the best way.
And nationalism isn't always bad, a group protecting members of that group (say based on geography) to the exclusion of the out-group is just how groups function.
one would think so. it is so weird to me that this is called racist and xenophobic by so many people. collective delusion happens all over the spectrum.
I guess we will see. New Zealand has gone from a comparatively equal society to one with a large divide in a relatively short time. Housing ownership is no longer possibly for many. This didnt seem right to a majority of voters.
Refer to the country's founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi[0],
> The Treaty established a British Governor of New Zealand, recognised Māori ownership of their lands, forests, and other properties, and gave Māori the rights of British subjects.
Although it was and remains a stark contrast to the way the British approached the natives and land of other colonies, there are ongoing issues with implementation today, see the link.
> Because the English and Māori versions of the Treaty differed significantly, there is no consensus as to exactly what was agreed upon.
So it does little to clarify. The Maori are a minority now. Anyone arguing that some of the land of NZ should not be sold to the highest bidder may want to explain how that relates to the not-so-ancient trade of all the land in NZ for compensation of a disputed nature and extent.
Here in bavaria, the supply and demand curve would have ruined the alps, in particular the allgäu. Everyone wants to live in a beautiful place- the problem is, the place is gone, once everyone does.
Only a vocal few are 'blaming it 100% on foreigners'. I say this as a foreigner in NZ.
What is recognized and being responded to here is that foreign investment in property/land in NZ is A factor contributing to the current housing bubble in the country. A factor. One factor. Not the factor.
How much of a factor? Difficult to establish since there has been wilful obfuscation of the facts. Right now the gathered official information on foreign property market activity in NZ puts it at anywhere from 3% to 57%. Yes, the data really is that flawed and it's likely not an accident.
Alongside this is a high rate of immigration (this is different from foreign investment land/property holdings, but the two do intertwine especially when it comes to properties being purchased by overseas students on temporary visas, which appears to be fairly widespread).
That's about it as far as factors that the racists and anti-racist racists can jump on board and shout about. Another factor is the geographic realities of NZ (while Auckland's low building height zoning seems unnecessary, it's very much a necessity for most of the rest of NZ which is one of the most earthquake-prone regions of the world).
Yet another factor is the expense and complications of constructing new housing stock here. First, the country's remoteness means a great deal of materials required must be shipped great distances and this costs both dollars and time. Second, there is a stranglehold monopoly on the supply of many building materials wherein a single corporate entity has managed to lobby for esoteric compliance requirements for said materials, to the point that they are functionally the only possible provider of said materials. Third a great portion of the building workforce has been tied up with the Christchurch rebuild (that little thing six years ago that pretty much levelled the third largest city in the country). This drove a reduction in workforce, materials and equipment availability for the rest of the country and so development has been consequently slower since. That rebuild is by no means complete.
Finally, zoning is not as simple as 'just do it'. Aside from the tectonic risk mentioned earlier, New Zealand maintains high percentages of protected green areas within it's cities, and aside from the aspirational and cultural reasons behind this, it's a important element of maintaining the country's overseas reputation as a clean, green tourism destination. Since that's 4% of GDP here (9% if you count the downstream stuff), it's important to maintain it, and chucking up dense residential, commercial, or industrial actively harms that reputation and will reduce GDP. On top of this, you can't simply change zoning and expect infrastructure to keep pace. It must be built to accommodate higher density and then the higher density can follow. As mentioned earlier, NZ's remoteness is a significant barrier to the kind of infrastructure investments required (and ten plus years ago too, if you want to look at solving the problems of today).
So, this is just a slice of what is a very complicated situation. I have by no means covered all the major factors above, just a few. This move to reduce foreign property speculation in NZ is sound, but only part of the picture. With any multi-faceted economic issue the impacts may not be exactly what is desired and the second-order effects of this might bring things that are even worse.
You can build tall buildings in earthquake-prone regions. Building height does not need to be limited because of earthquakes. Building codes can accommodate their likelihood. It makes the buildings more expensive, but there are standard ways of designing buildings to accommodate earthquakes of particular magnitudes.
What gives someone born in New Zealand any more rights than anyone else? This myopic nationalist mindset is ridiculous. We were all born on the same planet.
NZ is a country of immigration, and gives full rights to all citizens. This has nothing to do with where anyone is born.
> What gives .. any more rights than anyone else
Property rights are laws. They can be made, altered, and revoked. What gives NZ citizens the right to buy existing houses will be NZ laws, promulgated by a democratically elected parliament.
> This myopic nationalist mindset is ridiculous
There's a perfectly reasonable non-nationalist approach to this kind of law change, based on trying to keep housing available for people who can't bid against the global rich. I'm sure plenty of NZ progressives would love to protect the world's poor from the depredations of the 1%. But given the NZ parliament's limited jurisdiction (viz., to NZ), this seems like a reasonable start.
I normally similarly dislike the myopic nationalist tendencies but disagree with you here. When countries/people say "bring back jobs from China" I hate it. Chinese are humans and they aren't taking the jobs to screw you.. They are doing it to put food on the table.. How can you begrudge someone that? Particularly when the standard of living it so much lower on average there than the countries the complainers come from e.g. US, Australia. However, this is a rule preventing NON-RESIDENTS from purchasing. So long as you actually live in NZ a Chinese national could still buy property. I can understand why you'd prioritize residents being allowed to purchase over non-residents but of course this doesn't address wealthy residents buying their 20th investment property so it is at least a little distasteful in my opinion.
What constitutes a transient visitor compared to someone who lives there? I don't know what I will be doing and where I will be in a year. Never have. Does that mean I shouldn't be allowed buy property anywhere?
NZ citizens aren't under any obligation to put your interests before those of their fellow citizens. It would be generous for them to consider you, and generosity is good, all things being equal (and NZ has an admirable record as a generous polity). But the side-effect in this case it to allow poor New Zealanders to be predated on by the global rich. They have clearly decided to attempt to prevent this predation.
The best balance of policies to deal with fair & equitable housing supply has been the subject of vast tonnages of reports and research over many decades. It's hardly going to be resolved in a comments page.
That's a different topic from what I was commenting on, ie. NZ's putative duty to write its laws for your lifestyle convenience.
Clearly hardly any governments have read or paid attention to the "vast tonnages of reports and research over many decades" relating to fair & equitable housing supply or they wouldn't be resorting to the level of populist BS that is prevalent in the world today.
You have not provided any further details on why this is better.
And you mention living a transient lifestyle. Please tell me more about the property you own in Singapore then, because i'm sure you're happy paying a double digit percentage stamp duty in a not entirely stable market for 1-2 years of living here.
administrative divisions on multiple levels make sense. this way i can politically participate in shaping society around my physical location. this has nothing to do with rejecting foreigner's ways of live, it's about having a voice in how your own surroundings work and then see how these compare to other places based on other choices on a wider stage.
I agree on the philosophy around organisational structures. In relation to housing this is also a solved problem (hint: it's not solved in the way NZ are doing). In Singapore where I am currently based they have high quality subsidised public housing that is only available to citizens and permanent residents.
Blanket banning foreigners from purchasing does 2 undesirable things. It stops people being able to lay foundations to eventually migrate and it deflects attention from the real solution (perhaps a third is that it encourage cross-border trade but I'm not sure of the reality around that). The real solution is to build denser urban areas with a suitable supply of high quality subsidised public housing. This allows the poorer inhabitants to firstly live in areas that are economically feasible and, secondly, it is well documented that higher density cities have increased economic output of a non-linear nature compared to low density cities. An added benefit is that by fitting more people into less space we reduce our environmental footprint. It should have been part of the Paris climate accord to force cities to zone for building up not out.
Ehm, no immigrating individual ever buys property before having actually immigrated. Unless you’re obscenely wealthy, normals usually immigrate and get ripped off renting a couple years. In the meantime they stabilize, build enough credit data to get a mortgage, explore and learn where they want to setup permanently and then - finally - buy.
Sure they do. If you plan to move somewhere in 3 years and the property market is too expensive where you currently live it's cheaper and makes more sense to rent now and buy where you plan to move (especially since you can't afford local prices in any case).
You forgot to mention that the HDB scheme in Singapore covers about 80% of the population and the private market is also heavily regulated/taxed and prohibitively expensive. Immigration barriers are high and the immigration system is purely based on the needs of Singapore and not any sort of moral obligation towards the rest of the world. (To be clear: i consider the last part to be a good thing). People who use the term "racist" when discussing immigration policies would have to apply it to Singapore as well.
I also live in Singapore, and the high density here has a severe impact on quality of life (i'm using this term in a very wide sense here). I would never use this as a model for my home country. If anything, living here made me much more aware of the benefits of low population density.
Your 2 undesirable things might not be that undesirable for everyone.
If the lower income citizens are taken care of I don't see the issue with heavily regulated/taxed and prohibitively expensive property. It's supply and demand. It couldn't work any other way and it's a much better way to deal with the issue than ridiculous and ineffective knee-jerk blanket bans like in NZ.
Singapore offers a great quality of life. If you don't like it why do you stay here? High density has it's unique characteristics that may be less desirable for certain personalities but if you care about the environment and bio-diversity even in the slightest you would understand that taking a self-centred "I like my garden" approach to housing is absolutely the wrong way to go. This mindset has totally and utterly destroyed Ireland, my home country.
Even if we accept that the white people "own" NZ, the foreigners are buying it from the willing seller citizens. So the government does not get to decide on behalf of all citizens.
