Quote Originally Posted by SBQ View Post
There's a lot of inconveniences owning a rental property ; the maintenance and rates, insurance, expense that eats the return on the rental income. Where does this leave in terms of overall productivity? Not a lot compared to ownership of a business that allocates the wealth in all different areas. Specifically if one that can be exported (no you can't export the land and house it sits on in NZ abroad). So from an economic potential, there's no way a house can out beat the productivity potential of tangible & intangible products that can have a global market exposure.

But don't take my word for it. Have a read below that puts NZ's productivity at the near bottom:

Or, and the economic issue that mostly drove the creation of this blog, New Zealand’s dismal long-term economic performance. In short, productivity growth (and the lack of it), and our continued decline relative to other advanced economies...

Sadly, the only realistic interpretation one can take is that the IMF thinks that over 2019 to 2025, on current government policies, New Zealand’s productivity growth performance – labour productivity and MFP – will be simply shocking. Most probably negative – the only way to square falls in real GDP per capita, unemployment returning towards normal, and a reasonable level of investment – and almost certainly far worse than in almost all other advanced economies, and especially far worse than the performance in the countries that were aiming to close gaps with the OECD leaders.

https://croakingcassandra.com/category/productivity/

Perhaps NZ's huge preference in owning real estate assets is part of the reasons of NZ's low productivity? I would believe so.
Are you suggesting that all the houses in New Zealand should not have owners? Obviously that's not possible, so should they not exist at all? Perhaps all house owners should be compelled to own their own business, or be forced at gun-point to buy several thousand dollars worth of shares as well. If you don't think real estate should be preferred by so many, maybe once they have purchased some flats or something, they could be forced to attend a course in learning how to hate residential investments - although it soon comes quite naturally.