Housing

This research highlights distinct housing and demographic patterns in urban neighborhoods across Aotearoa New Zealand.Our goal is to identify locations in Aotearoa where racism and discrimination in housing markets may harm residents' socioeconomic outcomes.

Motu Research led the Warmer Kiwis Study, which focused on the heat pump component of EECA’s Warmer Kiwi Homes programme - aimed at making homes warmer, drier and healthier.

People need houses.    
More people higher prices,    
wherever they’re from.    

This paper analyses the relationship between local area housing and population size and migrant-status composition, using population data from the 1986–2013 New Zealand Censuses, house…

Produced as a report to the Ministry of Economic Development

This report summarises the results of an analysis of the costs and benefits of the Warm Up New Zealand: Heat Smart programme. Under the programme, subsidies are…

This study investigates the relationship between indoor damp, mould, cold and household crowding and the health outcomes of young children exposed to those conditions in Aotearoa.

Poor quality homes    
cause injuries and illness    
worth millions each year.    

The purpose of this evaluation is to determine whether the Healthy Homes Initiative (HHI) programme has improved health and social outcomes for families who have…

In the wake of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the governments of Australia and New Zealand undertook a variety of economic stimulus measures, including home insulation and heating retrofit programs. Australia’s Home Insulation Program (HIP) ended early…

Sunlight influences people's housing decisions, but city intensification may reduce sunlight exposure for neighboring properties, causing a negative externality. There are hitherto no rigorous estimates of the cost of this externality. Using over 5,000 observations…

Beams of light and warmth    
Make a house desirable,    
and we value them.    

Sunlight influences people’s real estate decisions, but city intensification may reduce sunlight exposure for neighbouring properties, causing a negative…

This paper takes advantage of a quasi-natural experiment in local property tax reform that arose from the amalgamation of several local councils in 2010 in Auckland, New Zealand, to form a unitary local authority. The…

This paper examines whether the major cities in Australasia make up a single housing market. If there is a single housing market across both countries, then Kiwi and Aussie house prices are primarily being driven…

Housing affordability is a multi-faceted, complex issue. Concentration on just one aspect of the issue – be it housing supply, land supply, interest rates, construction costs or migration – will miss important aspects of why…

We analyze the multiple channels of influence that global financial crisis-induced credit restrictions had on New Zealand's subnational housing markets. The dynamics caused by the credit shock are compared to those caused by a migration…

Buildings declared prone 
To fall in quakes, fall in price.* 
*Conditions apply. 

We test whether a major earthquake in one city (Christchurch, New Zealand) affects the prices of earthquake-prone commercial buildings in a city (Wellington) that was unaffected…

We treat the Canterbury (Christchurch) earthquake sequence as a potential source of new risk information to home buyers in New Zealand. 

We compare pre- and post-earthquake sales of properties in two other urban areas of the…

The database contains information on New Zealand property sales and valuations. Sales data is available from 1981 to 2006 at a quarterly level for TLAs and annually at MB and AU level. Valuation data is…

Housing New Zealand Corporation (HNZC) generously provided us with a dataset on 80,983 state houses covering the period 31 January 1936 to 16 February 2010. This derived dataset includes a tidied version of this raw…

This spreadsheet contains data on various aspects of the over 65 population in New Zealand compiled by Statistics New Zealand and released by them in the publication “New Zealand’s 65+ population” (2007: chapter1).

Obtained by Motu…

This spreadsheet contains data on various aspects of the over 65 population in New Zealand compiled by Statistics New Zealand and released by them in the publication “New Zealand’s 65+ population” (2007: chapter 6).

Obtained by…

This spreadsheet contains data on various aspects of the over 65 population in New Zealand compiled by Statistics New Zealand and released by them in the publication “New Zealand’s 65+ population” (2007: chapter 6).

Obtained by…

This spreadsheet contains data on the housing tenure of people in NZ in 2006, disaggregated by age.

Obtained by Motu Research in March 2009. Unrestricted dataset 9964.

Data Source: Statistics NZ.

This spreadsheet contains data on the size of houses people over 65 live in, 1996 and 2006, disaggregated by various sub-populations of people over 65.

Obtained by Motu Research in March 2009. Unrestricted dataset 9963.

Data Source:…

International migration is an important socio-economic phenomenon for most countries. A large body of research has focused on immigrant outcomes - what happens to migrants in their new countries? How long do they settle? Are…

Housing is the most important component of wealth for many New Zealanders. Its location is fixed and its value is influenced by economic and other factors specific to that location. Hence when people live in…

This paper investigates the long-run convergence of regional house prices in the UK. Using a variety of econometric methods, existing studies have failed to reach a consensus on whether or not regional house prices are cointegrated…

We discuss the pivotal role that housing plays for both social and economic outcomes. All people need to be housed, and housing circumstances help determine social outcomes, especially for vulnerable groups.

We outline an analytical framework…

We analyze relationships between housing supply elasticities, land costs and house price dynamics, contributing three main insights.

First, higher housing supply elasticities help contain short-run price spikes following demand shocks.
Second, land price dynamics influence this relationship;…

This was a Report to the Ministry of Economic Development.

This report is an evaluation of changes in the incidence and costs of health services, pharmaceutical usage and mortality in the first 46,655 houses retrofitted under…

Produced for the Centre for Housing Research Aotearoa New Zealand, Department of Building and Housing and Housing New Zealand Corporation.

Problems with housing affordability in Nelson, Tasman and Marlborough pose a significant restraint on economic development and productivity in…

Between 2002 and 2005, house prices in Nelson, Tasman and Marlborough rose sharply; rents also rose, but to a lesser degree. This paper considers how these price and rent rises are a response to imbalances…

Produced for the Centre for Housing Research Aotearoa New Zealand, Department of Building and Housing AND Housing New Zealand Corporation

"This report is the second in a series of reports within the research programme: Affordable Housing…

Produced for the Centre for Housing Research Aotearoa New Zealand AND the Department of Building and Housing AND Housing New Zealand Corporation,

This final paper in the programme, Affordable Housing in the Nelson, Tasman and Marlborough Regions:…

This paper was prepared for the Centre for Housing Research Aotearoa New Zealand AND the Department of Building and Housing AND the Housing New Zealand Corporation, 

This report presents data from interviews with a wide range of individuals…

This paper was prepared for the Ministry of Economic Development,

We analyse the impacts on monthly metered electricity and reticulated gas use of the houses retrofitted with insulation or clean heat source under the New Zealand Insulation…

Produced for the Centre for Housing Research Aotearoa New Zealand, Department of Building and Housing, and Housing New Zealand Corporation, Wellington

This paper, the first in a series of papers within the research programme Affordable Housing in the…

Produced for the Centre for Housing Research Aotearoa New Zealand, Department of Building and Housing, and Housing New Zealand Corporation, Wellington

House prices have risen substantially across much of New Zealand since 1981, but regional house prices…

This Report was prepared for the Ministry of Economic Development

This report provides an input to an evaluation of the New Zealand Insulation Fund (NZIF) that is coordinated and delivered by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority…

An efficient housing market is of critical importance for individual welfare and for a well-functioning economy.

We test the efficiency of this market by estimating the factors that determine both the long-run and the dynamic paths…

This report was prepared for the Centre for Housing Research Aotearoa New Zealand (CHRANZ).

The aim of this study is to identify a set of housing research projects addressing two related topics. First, the impact of…

This paper analyses local labour and housing market adjustment in New Zealand from 1989 to 2006.

We use a VAR approach to examine the adjustment of employment, employment rate, participation rate, wages, and house prices in…

Dwelling prices are determined in the long run by the total costs of a development, where costs include regulatory costs, including costs of delay and uncertainty.

We outline a conceptual framework for the development process and…

Does home-ownership affect individual social capital and thereby influence local outcomes? Following DiPasquale and Glaeser, a body of literature suggests that homeownership is positively related to social capital formation. Homeowners have an incentive to engage…

New Zealand experienced two natural experiments with respect to state-provided social housing after 1990. First, while continuing to acquire new state houses, the National Government substantially reduced the overall state house stock by selling a…

House price trends in each of New Zealand and Australia are frequently discussed as national level developments. Sub-national developments are also important, especially where regions display idiosyncratic trends driven either by demand factors (differential income…

The 1990s saw a significant sell-off of state houses in New Zealand, while the 2000s saw a material rebuilding of the state house inventory. We provide in-depth documentation of a rich spatially-defined dataset of the…

We propose a new method to estimate a repeat-sales house price index. Our unbalanced panel method employs an OLS panel regression to estimate the (log) house price as a function of time fixed effects and…

This paper develops a simple model that captures the essential features of the supply and demand for housing, and which is used to evaluate the impact of a range of policy interventions. The model incorporates…

We use New Zealand property data at the area unit (suburb) level to examine implied prospects for communities over time, and test whether these derived prospects have explanatory power relating to actual future outcomes. We…

This paper identifies the expansion and contraction phases of New Zealand's national and regional house prices, by employing techniques typically used to study cycles in real activity, the so-called Classical cycle dating method.

We then enquire…

We analyse two inter-related features of regional housing markets:

determinants of new housing supply, and
the impact of supply responsiveness on price dynamics.
We demonstrate that a suitably specified q-theory model (including residential land values as well as…

Housing costs comprise a major part of most household budgets. Larger households require greater space than do smaller households but do not necessarily have larger incomes. The cost of extra housing space (e.g. the cost of…

This paper investigates the long-run convergence of regional house prices in the UK. Using a variety of econometric methods, existing studies have failed to reach a consensus on whether or not regional house prices are…

This seminar examines how current tax structures combined with increasing longevity may be behind some of the changes in the housing market experienced in the last two decades, such as rising prices, the increasing sizeof…

We examine the impact of shocks on community outcomes. The shocks that we examine are exogenous economic shocks which occur externally to the local community, and which are hypothesised to impact on the community.

By testing…

We analyse the multiple channels of influence that GFC-induced credit restrictions had on New Zealand’s subnational housing markets. Our model isolates dynamics caused by impacts on the supply and the demand sides of the market.…

Pacific peoples in New Zealand have low rates of home-ownership compared with the average home-ownership rate in the country. There is a tendency also for Pacific peoples to have relatively low incomes and to live…

This paper proposes a framework for how houses could be developed, with a focus on how regulatory policies and practices affect decision making. The authors surveyed property developers in Auckland on how planning rules and…