​ Wages rising faster than house price rises

“Latest house price figures from Quotable Value show the annual growth rate has fallen to 2.9 per cent. This compares to Statistics NZ figures showing wages grew by 3.3 per cent in the year ending December 2018. “This compares to 2016 when house prices rose 16 per...

Tiny House Conference Coming to Auckland in April

Organiser and tiny home owner Sharla May says: “The tiny house scene in New Zealand is gaining momentum as people choose living tiny over living in houses most people can no longer afford. “Tiny living is definitely appealing to a wide audience. It’s becoming popular...

Homelessness strategy moves ahead, now have your say

To better understand homelessness and create a strategy to resolve it, Council staff have worked closely with local schools, health providers, government agencies, people and families who have found themselves homeless, and the social service organisations that work...

Trust House rent rises start to bite

The Times-Age has seen letters to a tenant in a 100sq m house putting the rent up by $15 a week in April last year and $20 a week from March this year to $288 a week. “It’s blimmen shocking, a lot are struggling and it’s going to be soon a lot out on...

Further boost to Hutt’s social housing stock

A concept rendering of one of the EasyBuild homes which will be built at Wesley Rātā Village in Naenae. The affordable rental homes are part of a development being run by Methodist organisation Wesley Community Action at Wesley Rātā Village in Naenae. The project was...

What’s the plan for Peacocke?

The 720-hectare Peacocke area south of the city officially became part of Hamilton, from the Waipa district, in 1989. From the beginning, and with its close proximity to the city, it was tagged for new housing development. However, the prohibitive cost of...

Mayor intervenes in family housing crisis

Kāpiti Coast District Mayor K Gurunathan has asked Council staff to do everything in their power to avoid the large family in Paraparaumu from being forced out of their Council-owned home with no-where to go. “This is a very unfortunate situation where the government...

Trust House: We can solve the housing crisis

Trust House boss Allan Pollard said Trust House would borrow $15m to $17m for the plan that could solve the housing crisis in the region. He is disappointed nothing has happened over “months and months” of talks and that the Government is looking at “lining the...

Record building consents show strong progress

The number of building consents for new dwellings in 2018 reached 32,996 – of these 21,125 were stand-alone homes, 3,551 were apartments, 1,829 were retirement village units and 6,491 were town houses or home units. Government-related building consents reached 1,999,...