Podcasts Other The Mike Hosking Breakfast Chris Bishop: Housing Minister on the plan to 'flood' the market with affordable land

Chris Bishop: Housing Minister on the plan to 'flood' the market with affordable land

Published: July 3, 2024, 8:20 p.m.

Housing Minister Chris Bishop will today unveil the Government\u2019s plan to\xa0\u201cflood the market\u2019 with land for development in a bid to end New Zealand\u2019s housing crisis.\xa0

Bishop will use a speech to the\xa0Real Estate Institute of New Zealand\xa0today to announce a slew of changes to New Zealand\u2019s planning laws recently agreed by Cabinet. He will argue the changes will flood the market with affordable land to develop and make it easier and cheaper to develop that land into housing.\xa0

Some of the changes are bound to be controversial; the Government will abolish councils\u2019 ability to set fixed\xa0urban-rural boundaries\xa0and will abolish powers that let councils mandate balconies or minimum floor area sizes for developments.\xa0

This means the market, and not councils, will set the minimum size of new apartments. This could be controversial, but Bishop will defend his changes in his speech, noting the rules \u201ccan significantly increase the cost of new apartments, and limit the supply of lower cost apartments\u201d.\xa0

Bishop told Mike Hosking most councils will go along, but he expects a few to disagree. \xa0

Councils will be required to plan for 30 years of housing growth.\xa0

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