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The BulletinMay 26, 2023

Is the ‘density done well’ dream dead?

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National’s housing about-face could mean less urban housing, more city-edge sprawl, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.

From an ‘emphatic yes’ on housing density to ‘we got it wrong’

Christopher Luxon was only a couple of weeks into his National leadership when, in December 2021, he gave his backing to a law change aimed at dramatically increasing housing density in our major cities. His deputy Nicola Willis, the bill’s sponsor, called the bipartisan legislation a “win-win” for home buyers and renters alike. “Today National and Labour are coming together to say an emphatic ‘yes’ to housing in our backyards,” she said at the time. The amendment to the Resource Management Act obliges councils to allow construction of up to three dwellings of three storeys – townhouses, in other words – on most urban sites, and had been welcomed as a game-changer by housing advocates. On Wednesday, Luxon said his party had got it wrong. Greenfield development should instead be the focus, he told audiences in Auckland (and again yesterday in Queenstown), and councils should regain the right to determine density controls for their own urban areas.

The councils bite back

Luxon’s u-turn is not only a response to homeowners worried their neighbourhoods will be subsumed by a tidal wave of townhouses. Councils have also voiced their disapproval by watering down parts of the Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS). In Christchurch, the council voted not to adopt them at all, eventually passing a new set of standards that exempt almost half the city’s residential properties from the national rules. In Auckland, the council used a “special character” loophole to exclude most of affluent suburbs like Grey Lynn, Ponsonby and Devonport from medium density builds. And Hamilton City Council has tried to claim the entire city should be exempt, “because it all feeds into the Waikato River catchment,” reports Sharon Brettkelly of RNZ’s The Detail. So where should all the required housing go instead? Luxon wants more of it on former farmland, and according to urban planner Malcolm McCracken, that’s a big mistake: “Can we afford to invest in and subsidise greenfield growth? From both a financial and emissions reduction perspective, the answer is no.”

‘Once again the outer suburbs get absolutely shafted’

The Spinoff’s Ben Gracewood is among those incensed by Luxon’s about-face. He’s seen his Te Atatu neigbourhood become a traffic-snarled building site in recent years but had believed it was for the greater good. Now? “Once again the outer suburbs get absolutely shafted… We’ve taken one for the team and are crammed here in our dormitory suburbs while the other half of the team sip lattes and Lime around like nothing has changed.” On his Kākā newsletter, Bernard Hickey says that even if National doesn’t become the government, the damage may already be done “because the opponents of MDRS at council level, and the potential developers and off-the-plan buyers, will know to run a mile if their plans depend on MDRS”. In a fascinating piece on his Museum Street newsletter, republished on The Spinoff, Henry Cooke looks at National’s internal divisions over housing intensification, and says it’s a u-turn they may live to regret. “The best way to breed new right-wing voters is to give them a mortgage,” he writes. Without the MDRS, that home owning dream may be even further out of reach.

Kingmaker? What kingmaker?

For now though, National’s prospects are looking rosy. Last night’s 1News Kantar Public poll has National up three points to 37% and Act steady on 11%. Converted into seats in parliament, National would pull in 47 and Act 15, for a total of 62 – enough to form a government without the need for Te Pāti Māori as a kingmaker. One poll is just one poll, of course, so The Spinoff has created some spiffy data visualisations showing the results from the last five polls, and the changing fortunes of the left/right blocs since the 2017 election.

Keep going!
The Reserve Bank’s commentary yesterday was described as “dovish” for the first time in a while (Image: Getty, additional design by Archi Banal)
The Reserve Bank’s commentary yesterday was described as “dovish” for the first time in a while (Image: Getty, additional design by Archi Banal)

The BulletinMay 25, 2023

And with that, the OCR hike season comes to an end

The Reserve Bank’s commentary yesterday was described as “dovish” for the first time in a while (Image: Getty, additional design by Archi Banal)
The Reserve Bank’s commentary yesterday was described as “dovish” for the first time in a while (Image: Getty, additional design by Archi Banal)

Probably. The Reserve Bank stuck with its forecast of the OCR peaking at 5.5% but still managed to deliver shock and orr with its commentary, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.

‘Dovish tone’ surprises

For maybe the first time since I started writing The Bulletin and covering official cash rate (OCR) announcements, I can finally use the word “dovish”. The hawks have left the building. If you’re still wondering what these economic bird analogies mean, here’s what I read when I started this gig and could no longer pretend I knew what the bird words meant. The Reserve Bank (RBNZ) announced a lift in the OCR by 25 basis points to 5.5% yesterday afternoon and said the OCR hike cycle that started in October 2021 has likely ended after 12 consecutive rate hikes. Though the bank was just sticking with its November forecast of 5.5% as the peak OCR, the markets and many commentators were surprised by the bank’s “dovish” tones after expecting government spending and net migration figures to be assessed as inflationary, and therefore requiring the OCR to go as high as 6%. If “dovish” isn’t the word for you, you can always run with “chill”, as Tom Pullar-Strecker has done in The Post (paywalled), when describing the RBNZ’s assessment of the economic outlook.

Chart showing OCR rates since 2000 to May 2023
Source: Reserve Bank of New Zealand

Consumer spending slowing

Unusually, the Monetary Policy Committee took the decision to a vote with two of the seven voting members wanting no increase at all. In a statement the committee said “the level of interest rates are constraining spending and inflation pressure” and inflation pressures at home and abroad have been easing. It pointed to slowing consumer spending which was supported by the latest retail spending data from Stats NZ  that showed the total volume of retail sales falling by 4.1% in the March quarter. Unlike Treasury, the bank is still forecasting a recession but a very shallow one in the June and September quarters this year.

What does it mean for homeowners?

As Stuff’s Susan Edmunds reports, economists think home loan interest rates are probably about as high as they are going to get. Kiwibank chief economist Jarrod Kerr said wholesale markets had priced in an OCR peak of nearly 6% in the past week. While the RBNZ doesn’t see a lowering of the OCR until September 2024, most economists are expecting home loan rates to start to drop in early 2024. However, as BusinessDesk’s Rebecca Howard reports (paywalled), many economists are also saying that despite the forward guidance from the RBNZ, they think a further OCR hike could be possible. At this point, we throw up our hands and place our fate in the lap of the Gods.

RBNZ relaxed on government spending and migration

In The Post this morning (paywalled), Luke Malpass describes yesterday’s rate hike as one “that didn’t realise the worst fears of Labour Party strategists” with the RBNZ essentially giving the budget a “pass mark”. RBNZ governor Adrian Orr described fiscal policy as “more of a friend than foe to monetary policy”. Malpass writes that the RBNZ has basically assessed that the government will spend a bit more than the central bank expected in February but that the size of government spending as a portion of the economy will contract over the next few years. Cyclone recovery and repair spending, rather than other discretionary budget spending, seems to be the drive behind the short-run spending assessment. Crucially, for all of us who have lived with a small Orr in our ears every time we took out our wallets, Orr said we’d cooled the jets.