Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Brad Olsen: Infometrics Principal Economist on the ghost houses revealed in the latest census data

Transcript

Brad Olsen: Infometrics Principal Economist on the ghost houses revealed in the latest census data · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ghost houses. Would a tax on these houses work to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: fix the problem. Choe Swallbrick has previously said that she
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: would be in supportive one. You've got some housing charitable
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: trusted being supported one. More than one hundred thousand houses
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: were empty in the latest census, the so called ghost houses.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Brad Elson is the Informetric's principal economs. He's with us
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  Speaker 1: this morning, Brad, Good morning, good morning. Good to have
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  Speaker 1: you on the show. So is this all like evil
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: rich people sitting on houses of vacation homes or what
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  Speaker 1: are they?
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  Speaker 2: Well? And this is the thing often we don't have
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  Speaker 2: that good of an idea. Every five years in the
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: census we get a bit of an update on what
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  Speaker 2: we call unoccupied dwellings, so dwellings that had no one
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  Speaker 2: in them on census night. And we know that looking
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: through the numbers, around about half of those were where
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: people do live in them, they just weren't there on
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  Speaker 2: Census night. The other remaining portion, which is like you say,
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: around about one hundred thousand we're empty on sensusnight and
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: don't normally have anyone living in them. But there is
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: a variety of reasons that could be. They could be
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  Speaker 2: holiday homes or batches. They could be because they're undergoing renovations.
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  Speaker 2: Looking through some of the figures, some of the biggest
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  Speaker 2: are the areas that had the biggest increase in so
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  Speaker 2: called ghost homes or completely empty dwellings were in the
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  Speaker 2: likes of Auckland, Gibson, and Hawk's Bay. And what that
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  Speaker 2: leads me to believe is that actually there's a not
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  Speaker 2: insignificant part of those apparent ghost homes that will probably
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  Speaker 2: cyclone damage, that have a flood damaged, or particularly in Auckland,
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  Speaker 2: they might well have been homes that had recently been
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  Speaker 2: built but hadn't quite moved on yet. So I really
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  Speaker 2: don't know if we're actually going to be able to
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  Speaker 2: tax something that we can't normally see. It's a big project,
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  Speaker 2: big proposal that people talk about, but I'm not sure
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  Speaker 2: we could actually have the information to do it no good.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: It sounds like a too hard basket situation. And do
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  Speaker 1: we actually know that if we if all of these
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  Speaker 1: homes aren't be they batches or whatever, if they were
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: released onto the market, what would have helped to solve
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: or ease a housing crisis in an area, or not
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: have the quantity in say Queenstown, to actually make a difference.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, any additional housing is useful, but again, you know,
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  Speaker 2: it's not the sort of thing I don't think that
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  Speaker 2: anyone would propose that government would come in and sort
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  Speaker 2: of necessarily force these houses into work. Again, some of
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  Speaker 2: them are under renovations and similar they might actually not
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: be all that sits of purpose for a lot of people.
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  Speaker 2: One of the encouraging signs we actually had in the
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  Speaker 2: census was that some of the policies that have gone
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: by the likes of healthy Home standards have actually quite
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: substantially lifted housing quality across the country. So you know,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: some of those signs are encouraging. We've now got fewer
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  Speaker 2: homes that are damp, we've got fewer homes that are moldy.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Two thirds of homes now have a heat pump. So
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: when those are encouraging numbers. But I don't know how
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  Speaker 2: forcing homes that we don't actually know a huge amount
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  Speaker 2: about onto the market is necessarily a solution.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Now, Brad, we have to live it there. I'm really sorry,
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  Speaker 1: but Brad Olsen, who's Informetric's chief executive and principal economists
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: with us this morning talking about those ghost homes and
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: more in Really About the Sensystem. For more from News
• 3:02
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• 3:09
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