Regarding (2), it depends on what you mean by affordable. It is becoming more affordable to buy land compared to the last few years, because of interest rate rises making the cost of credit increase. It is becoming less affordable to build a house or other capital improvements, because of construction material cost increases and a labour shortage. Rents are rising but not as rapidly as the rest of NZ because of a declining population combined with an increase in the supply of housing. This last point is really what the author is touching on, but those who rent are not your friends that have large mortgages.
My friends and family who could not afford to buy have almost all left the city completely, so I guess you’re right in the sense they don’t rent _in Auckland_ any more. Last Summer I spent half my time driving between Warkworth, Rotorua, and Hamilton just to see those nearest and dearest to me. We all used to live less than 20 minutes from the Harbour Bridge.
A ton of young people leave, because NZ has low wages, very high cost of living, and is very isolating because most places feel suburban/rural and car dominated.
NZ is terrific if you’ve got family wealth to fall back on, but without you’re doomed.
I wanted to stay, but in spite of graduating top of my computer science class, couldn’t find decently paid work.
I moved to Aus 5 years ago and immediately >doubled my salary, could afford a house, and lived in an exciting city instead of a low wage semi rural small town.
Australia of course has many problems of its own, and in particular, treats poor disadvantaged people terribly. But NZ is grim for everybody except the already well off property owning class.
I left NZ (Auckland) about 16 years ago now. Just going from Auckland>Sydney gained me 25k salary increase. However when I left, searching C# / .NET jobs there was like 3 listed in the last 30 days, vs ~300 in Sydney. While searching PHP in NZ there were ~100 of jobs.
Now I have a family and gonna be moving back to NZ, there isn't a chance in hell I would go to Auckland as the prices are out of control. The house I grew up in my parents bought for ~200k and sold for like ~600k, I recently checked and it last sold for 2.4m 2 years ago.
Prices are slowly coming down now that overseas buyers are barred from purchasing houses. But when you've had decades of housing prices going up and up its difficult for people to accept the house is worth less than when they bought it.
Theres many other problems causing housing prices to be high than just 'zoning'. The amount of effort to build your own house is absurd, people don't want to buy land and get an architect etc, too many rules and regulations, getting approval every step of the way takes forever. And the government is dragging its feet to get houses built themselves.
Auckland specifically has a declining population, although it may change this year with immigration returning to pre-Covid levels. Aucklanders often move out of Auckland either overseas or to cheaper cities, when the economy slows, in a mild version of a boom bust cycle. Usually immigration offsets this but it hasn't quite picked up to the previous levels yet.
NZ as a whole doesn't have a declining population, and Auckland usually does not.
