New Conservatives recognise that housing availability, affordability, and quality all need to be addressed on multiple fronts.
There is no simple solution to this critical area and we need a number of initiatives. Our primary focus is on these 5 key areas.
Supply Management: We will address the shortfall in housing supply on various fronts including:
- Resource Management Act and local government reform
- bringing more unproductive land to the market
- time-frames for undeveloped land to prevent pure land-banking
- improved and sustainable regional growth
- pre-consented plans
- review of taxation levers
Demand Management: We will find innovative ways to manage the demand on housing, such as initiatives to help New Zealand families into their own homes. New Conservatives would look at the use of levers like tax incentives, Kiwisaver changes, rent-to-buy schemes, shared equity models, and reducing immigration.
Cost Factors: Cost is creating one of the single biggest hurdles to home ownership. New Conservatives will seek to change regulations to allow more pre-fabrication. We will also encourage and develop greater efficiency in property markets, and remove unnecessary regulation and compliance costs, particularly in residential housing. To enable housing suppliers to gear up and build more houses for any government-initiated building programme, the government would have to provide surety of demand.
Skill Shortfalls: We will introduce trade training at Year 9 to give young people the opportunity to choose a trade as a career path during their education. They will be qualified sooner and it will help keep them in the education system. There needs to be a defined focus on encouraging the trades as a positive career choice with good financial outcomes.
Building Regulation: Many areas can be addressed here such as:
- better standards regulation
- more use of public/private partnerships
- allowing materials certified in western developed nations to be used without additional certification for New Zealand
- using building methods that are time-proven and reduce maintenance moving forward
- streamlining the codemark process to allow greater competition
All residential construction will require a minimum 10-year guarantee. This will incentivise insurers to weed out poor builders and give homeowners peace of mind. Insured builders and designers should be allowed to self-approve some work.