Parliament debates the 'True Blue', affordable house

2/02/2013 8:24:58 p.m.

eric wrote:

no or restrict foreign buyer will take a lot of pressure off genuine kiwi buyer. but john key just doesn't like this idea....

2/02/2013 8:57:30 a.m.

Mike wrote:

@Zac Fletchers is a large construction business, amoung other things. 310 homes is not many for them, but to increase to approaching 10,000 a year is well beyond their ability. Fletchers is also heavily involved with fixing Christchurch.

If not for Christchurch and otehr commitments, could Fletchers build a lot more homes? Probably. 10,000 a year? No.

While Fletchers can get some decrease in costs thorugh economies of scale, they wont be the cheapest to build. This has been proven time and again. Why? Its simple, even with the lowest costs, Fletchers wont run margins as low as many smaller operators, so the government wont actually get cheaper through Fletchers. What Fletchers gives is security to build on a large scale, generally at a reasonable price, not the best price. For what amounts to small building jobs, like homes, many smaller operators in NZ will do the same for cheaper.

The big issue is land prices, and Aucklands Labour lead council not making cheaper land available, and the RMA adding too much to land costs for cheaper homes to be even viable. This by itself makes the proposal impossible to work. Labour needs to show us where they intend to put 100,000 cheap homes - most of which will have to be in Auckland. Labour wont do this as it can't be done without costing a lot more than their $300,000 budget each.

31/01/2013 2:13:14 p.m.

zac wrote:

@ Mike - I didn't have 3 pages on here to explain it in fine details for you what the Fletcher manager has said, and what Shearer has already said about their policy. In brief, the manager said that they could build significantly more than the 310 houses they are building at the moment, and currently land availability is their biggest constraint. He agreed with Labour that a large scale housing project can bring the cost down if land availability is not an issue. I dont know where you got the piece about 'if they took a large government contract, and they are already too busy to handle large scale home building' from? The manager from Fetchers never mentioned anything about contracts, or unable to handle large scale house buildings. As usual you make up things as you go a long. John Key should be apologising to us for telling us porkies that it cant be done when a house in his own electorate has been built for around what Labour is proposing. It shows you how well he know what's happening in his own electorate.