Councils hit their numbers for years. Prices kept climbing anyway
New Zealand's housing debate has long been dominated by targets — how many homes, how fast, and who is responsible for delivering them. New research from The New Zealand Initiative argues that framing has been the problem all along.
The report, Beyond Targets, makes the case that dwelling targets give politicians and communities something to argue about while leaving the underlying causes of unaffordability untouched.
"Our cities have been meeting their housing targets for years while house prices kept climbing,” said Benno Blaschke, research fellow at The New Zealand Initiative, in a media release. “The housing targets gave politicians and communities a number to fight over while ignoring everything underneath."
The market conditions that backdrop that argument are stark. REINZ data for April shows the national median residential price slipped 0.6% year-on-year to $775,000, while sales volumes fell 7.9% — with Auckland recording a 14.8% annual drop — despite years of target-setting.
Replace targets with price signals
The central proposal is to replace housing targets with price-based indicators that measure whether planning rules are actually making cities more affordable. Rather than counting consents, the approach would track whether costs and prices at planning boundaries reveal artificial scarcity. For example, price jumps at city boundaries reveal whether planning rules are creating artificial scarcity — and where buyers pay a premium for location alone, that signals councils are not allowing development where people actually want to be.
Blaschke framed the current system as one that treats housing permissions as a scarce commodity rather than a mechanism for meeting need.
"A central authority decides how much is needed, then imposes their will on everyone by allocating their chosen quantity as a cage on cities," he said. "Price-based accountability would expose how that forces the market to price what is scarce: permission."
The report draws support from several directions. Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has said housing targets make people focus on the wrong thing. Urbanist Alain Bertaud, during a New Zealand visit earlier this year, warned that forecasts baked into regulation straitjacket cities. And Housing Minister Chris Bishop's own description of the two million homes figure as "a red herring that transformed into a lightning rod" reinforced the argument.
An independent expert panel as the circuit breaker
Beyond Targets also recommends creating an independent expert panel of urban economists with permanent standing and the power to overrule council plans that fail to deliver affordable, productive cities. The model draws on the Independent Hearings Panel that shaped Auckland's Unitary Plan, but with broader and more durable authority.
Blaschke acknowledged the limits of any technical fix.
"It will never be possible to completely take the politics out of housing," he said. "But an expert panel does two things: it puts a layer between communities and politicians so that decisions do not directly expose ministers; and it shifts the focus from headline numbers to the real question. Do the rules make our cities more affordable and productive, or not?"
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