Three quarters of Kiwis want house prices to fall and almost half of us want them to fall substantially, according to the latest 1News Kantar Public Poll.
The poll comes as the Government was accused of turbo-charging the housing crisis with its Covid-19 policies of driving down interest rates and driving up asset values.
We asked, ‘would you like to the see the price of housing in New Zealand fall?’
Twenty-nine per cent said ‘yes, a little’, while nearly half of all respondents (47%) said ‘yes, a lot’.
That's 77% of Kiwis wanting house prices to fall.
Just 18% said ‘no’ when asked, while 5% didn't know.
Housing Minister Megan Woods said the Government did manage "to pull the throttle back" on the rampant house price inflation that was being seen in early 2021.
"We were seeing very high rates of growth and that's why we took action and introduced measures like reducing the ability of speculators to claim interest, also putting the money into infrastructure and addressing that decades-long deficit."
Woods said nearly every commentator is now predicting house prices would fall this year.
National's housing spokesperson Nicola Willis said nearly everyone was expecting a correction after a 20% rise in prices just last year.
"Clearly that is unsustainable, and most house owners that I talk to have factored in already that house prices have to come back," she said.
Economic Commentator Bernard Hickey told 1News the Government's response to Covid-19 - printing billions to drive interest rates lower and boost confidence has turbo-charged house prices and inequality.
"Unfortunately the Government's policies have made that much much worse by firstly increasing asset values, but also not increasing incomes at the bottom to deal with the massive increase in rents."
Megan Woods said governments' around the world have seen runaway house prices in the wake of Covid.
"Of course it's a concern to us as a Government and that's exactly why we took action with the housing package we announced back in March of last year."
The Greens co-leader Marama Davidson told 1News that Labour Government Ministers were failing to take the action required - such as implementing a proper capital gains tax, a wealth tax and a guaranteed minimum income for people.
"It is very very clear that the Labour Cabinet Ministers have it in their power to do the right thing and use those levers, pull on those levers so that people have a decent chance of having some decent lives," she said.
View the results from January poll here.
Between January 22 to 26, 2022, 1000 eligible voters were polled by mobile phone (500) and online (500). The maximum sampling error is approximately ±3.1%-points at the 95% confidence level. The data has been weighted to align with Stats NZ population counts for age, gender, region, education level and ethnic identification. The sample for mobile phones is selected by random dialling using probability sampling, and the online sample is collected using an online panel.
SHARE ME