Tauranga homes 8th most expensive in the world

Owning a home in Tauranga is more expensive than London and San Francisco. Photo: John Borren.

If you think owning a home in Tauranga is getting out of reach, here's why.

According to a new study, Tauranga is the eighth most expensive city to own a home in the world when measured against income.

Median household income for Tauranga residents is $68,800 per year, while the median house price is $623,000.

That makes Tauranga more expensive than cities like London and San Francisco and it out-strips Auckland as this country's least affordable.

The 15th annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Study compared house prices to incomes in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The world's most expensive city is Hong Kong, followed by Vancouver, Sydney, Melbourne, Santa Cruz, San Jose, Los Angeles and on the 8th spot Tauranga.

The Survey co-author Hugh Pavletich says two reasons why housing in Tauranga is so expensive is lack of land supply and there's no proper debt financing of infrastructure.

'Poor first home buyers are paying the huge capital cost of subdivisions,” says Hugh.

'If these two issues are solved we are going to be 90 per cent there in making houses affordable.

'Council has been aware of rising prices for years.

'There's no excuse for them not to open up land supply and properly finance infrastructure.”

Hugh says people are moving to smaller centers in a bid to find affordable housing.

The survey says Auckland is among 29 major unaffordable housing markets with a population of over one million.

Tauranga is among 309 unaffordable housing markets under a million population.

The study blaming what it calls "urban containment policies".

It says that's led to land scarcity which has pushed up house prices.

The report says housing had been unaffordable in New Zealand for the last quarter of a century.

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2 comments

So what?

Posted on 23-01-2019 07:49 | By Slim Shady

People go to London et al to find work. People come to Tauranga for other reasons. Lifestyle, retirees. They are cashed up, don’t need ‘income’. Meaningless comparing it with proper cities. You may as well compare it to Bethlehem Country Club. We should stop building here to keep it desirable and nice, though it may be too late, or it just becomes another sprawling mess.


Poor Headline

Posted on 23-01-2019 13:14 | By Hugh Janis

Monaco, New York, London, Paris, Rome, Tel Aviv, Stockholm, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Moscow, Mumbai, Vienna, Toronto, Helsinki, Amsterdam, Sydney, Taipei. Tauranga is far from the 8th most expensive house prices in the world. Don't compare median house prices to median incomes in a city where 28 percent of households are on benefits.


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