8 | Carrus Corporation Tauranga house frenzy a perfect storm DEVELOPMENT Phone: 03 983 5500 waterfordpress.co.nz Your Business, Your Industry, Your News. DO OUR READERS KNOW YOU EXIST? www.goodmans.nz Proud to be associated with Carrus Corporation Tauranga’s housing crisis has been decades in the making and managing director of Carrus Properties, Scott Adams, doesn’t see it getting better any time soon. The land Carrus is developing is selling out in a frenzy as soon as it hits the market fetching far above the reserve price indicating huge demand-supply issues still exist. While he acknowledges this is good for developers, he says it is not good for social outcomes in New Zealand in general. “Tauranga is way behind the eight ball and can’t keep up with population growth creating a whole host of macroeconomic issues. “For example, we have about 4000 homeless people in Tauranga. Some people are living in their cars then getting up and going to work. “We are one of the most unaffordable cities in the world. The median house price now exceeds $1,000,000 because Tauranga is a desirable place to live but we don’t have a supply of land to meet demand and subsequently people pay ridiculous prices.” “We are one of the most unaffordable cities in the world. The median house price now exceeds $1,000,000 because Tauranga is a desirable place to live but we don’t have a supply of land to meet demand and subsequently people pay ridiculous prices.” Scott says land needs to be rezoned more rapidly and at scale to bring much more supply to the market. A whole host of well publicised issues are making this problematic including: environmentally focused National Policy Statements under the RMA and a lack of public & private funding required to put in new infrastructure. “In New Zealand, local authorities, rather than the Crown, are responsible for arranging funding the new infrastructure and the Local Government Finance Act says that councils can’t have more than 250% debt to equity, which makes funding at scale impossible. “Yet central government reaps the benefits of new development in billions of dollars of GST on house sales and provisional taxes etc. “A higher percentage of this money should Tauranga is struggling with population growth with demand for land and housing pushing the median house price to over $1 million. to page 12 be filtered back into re-zoning and servicing future development land. “The government has been too slow to react to the desperate need for serviced land supply with no funding allocated into infrastructure, and worse than that there is a really strong focus from this current government to instead put energy into diverting money into various planning environmental national policy statements that allow no pathway for urban development.” He says the proposed Te Tumu future urban growth area in Papamoa East is a good example. Te Tumu is a future urban growth area for an estimated 30,000 people. Scott says the plan change preparation has been hugely challenging for Tauranga City Council and other Te Tumu landowners. Karen Phelps
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