Executive Summary: New Zealand’s housing market needs urgent reform. For too long, the rate of building has fallen below what is needed to keep up with household formation and demographics. It is difficult, costly, and time consuming to build a new house or dwelling. Rather than tinkering with demand-side stop-gap solutions, nominal subsidies, and bit-part...

This report is a summary of international fieldwork examining different property markets and systems of local government. Using Switzerland, Germany, Britain and Texas as comparisons to New Zealand, the report examines how they interact with local regulators, how the incentives at local government level affect how houses are built, and how their planning culture has...