Melbourne still a lot less than Auckland and the reason is due to better policies. Australia has CGT, which directs investments into more productive areas like their share market. This is nothing new as others like Canada and the US use taxation to take away the heat from investing in 1 specific asset. NZ is clueless about demand controls so the come up with silly excuses like "not enough supply...". It's a lot more to that than just a supply problem. Also Australia has land tax. The smart investors don't buy houses in Australia, they do it in a business or on the share markets. But in NZ, we have tax policies that go the opposite way. We reward the rich people that own houses with no CGT, no supplementary land tax, no sur-charge on rates when held in a trust or in a company or by persons owning more than 1 house. We punish the productive part of society, the middle class, by giving them a Kiwi Saver which it's annual gains are taxed.
But seriously, from an aggregate point of view in society. How does a nation benefit from having excessive rising house prices? The only winners i'm seeing in NZ is the banks, for which most are foreign owned (as the profits are sent abroad to pay the share holders). It splits society between "the haves" and "the have nots". Guys like him selling is property investment book have the $ and their children would most likely end up in private schooling, for which their children will not understand or see the divide between the very wealthy and the commoners. I see this happening in NZ everyday volunteering in a public school. Little things like tissue paper boxes are requested as the school has no budget. Private schools don't have this problem. So as society carries on, what is left is a social divide which can almost be rooted between those that have houses and those that don't.
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