1
00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:04,000
Speaker 1: Ghost houses. Would a tax on these houses work to

2
00:00:04,080 --> 00:00:06,840
Speaker 1: fix the problem. Choe Swallbrick has previously said that she

3
00:00:06,880 --> 00:00:09,560
Speaker 1: would be in supportive one. You've got some housing charitable

4
00:00:09,560 --> 00:00:12,720
Speaker 1: trusted being supported one. More than one hundred thousand houses

5
00:00:12,760 --> 00:00:16,320
Speaker 1: were empty in the latest census, the so called ghost houses.

6
00:00:16,360 --> 00:00:19,280
Speaker 1: Brad Elson is the Informetric's principal economs. He's with us

7
00:00:19,280 --> 00:00:22,160
Speaker 1: this morning, Brad, Good morning, good morning. Good to have

8
00:00:22,200 --> 00:00:25,320
Speaker 1: you on the show. So is this all like evil

9
00:00:25,440 --> 00:00:29,440
Speaker 1: rich people sitting on houses of vacation homes or what

10
00:00:29,560 --> 00:00:29,960
Speaker 1: are they?

11
00:00:31,080 --> 00:00:32,920
Speaker 2: Well? And this is the thing often we don't have

12
00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:35,120
Speaker 2: that good of an idea. Every five years in the

13
00:00:35,159 --> 00:00:37,239
Speaker 2: census we get a bit of an update on what

14
00:00:37,280 --> 00:00:40,400
Speaker 2: we call unoccupied dwellings, so dwellings that had no one

15
00:00:40,400 --> 00:00:43,080
Speaker 2: in them on census night. And we know that looking

16
00:00:43,120 --> 00:00:46,680
Speaker 2: through the numbers, around about half of those were where

17
00:00:46,680 --> 00:00:48,519
Speaker 2: people do live in them, they just weren't there on

18
00:00:48,600 --> 00:00:53,159
Speaker 2: Census night. The other remaining portion, which is like you say,

19
00:00:53,159 --> 00:00:56,880
Speaker 2: around about one hundred thousand we're empty on sensusnight and

20
00:00:57,480 --> 00:01:00,200
Speaker 2: don't normally have anyone living in them. But there is

21
00:01:00,360 --> 00:01:02,680
Speaker 2: a variety of reasons that could be. They could be

22
00:01:02,760 --> 00:01:07,480
Speaker 2: holiday homes or batches. They could be because they're undergoing renovations.

23
00:01:07,760 --> 00:01:09,880
Speaker 2: Looking through some of the figures, some of the biggest

24
00:01:10,160 --> 00:01:13,160
Speaker 2: are the areas that had the biggest increase in so

25
00:01:13,280 --> 00:01:16,160
Speaker 2: called ghost homes or completely empty dwellings were in the

26
00:01:16,280 --> 00:01:19,320
Speaker 2: likes of Auckland, Gibson, and Hawk's Bay. And what that

27
00:01:19,400 --> 00:01:21,600
Speaker 2: leads me to believe is that actually there's a not

28
00:01:21,760 --> 00:01:25,440
Speaker 2: insignificant part of those apparent ghost homes that will probably

29
00:01:25,520 --> 00:01:28,960
Speaker 2: cyclone damage, that have a flood damaged, or particularly in Auckland,

30
00:01:28,959 --> 00:01:31,360
Speaker 2: they might well have been homes that had recently been

31
00:01:31,400 --> 00:01:34,400
Speaker 2: built but hadn't quite moved on yet. So I really

32
00:01:34,440 --> 00:01:36,000
Speaker 2: don't know if we're actually going to be able to

33
00:01:36,120 --> 00:01:39,920
Speaker 2: tax something that we can't normally see. It's a big project,

34
00:01:39,920 --> 00:01:41,960
Speaker 2: big proposal that people talk about, but I'm not sure

35
00:01:41,959 --> 00:01:44,479
Speaker 2: we could actually have the information to do it no good.

36
00:01:44,680 --> 00:01:47,600
Speaker 1: It sounds like a too hard basket situation. And do

37
00:01:47,680 --> 00:01:50,600
Speaker 1: we actually know that if we if all of these

38
00:01:50,640 --> 00:01:53,320
Speaker 1: homes aren't be they batches or whatever, if they were

39
00:01:53,360 --> 00:01:55,560
Speaker 1: released onto the market, what would have helped to solve

40
00:01:55,800 --> 00:01:58,680
Speaker 1: or ease a housing crisis in an area, or not

41
00:01:59,320 --> 00:02:03,240
Speaker 1: have the quantity in say Queenstown, to actually make a difference.

42
00:02:04,800 --> 00:02:07,840
Speaker 2: I mean, any additional housing is useful, but again, you know,

43
00:02:07,880 --> 00:02:09,880
Speaker 2: it's not the sort of thing I don't think that

44
00:02:10,400 --> 00:02:13,639
Speaker 2: anyone would propose that government would come in and sort

45
00:02:13,680 --> 00:02:17,600
Speaker 2: of necessarily force these houses into work. Again, some of

46
00:02:17,600 --> 00:02:20,440
Speaker 2: them are under renovations and similar they might actually not

47
00:02:20,480 --> 00:02:22,600
Speaker 2: be all that sits of purpose for a lot of people.

48
00:02:22,840 --> 00:02:24,920
Speaker 2: One of the encouraging signs we actually had in the

49
00:02:24,960 --> 00:02:27,800
Speaker 2: census was that some of the policies that have gone

50
00:02:27,880 --> 00:02:30,440
Speaker 2: by the likes of healthy Home standards have actually quite

51
00:02:30,440 --> 00:02:34,360
Speaker 2: substantially lifted housing quality across the country. So you know,

52
00:02:34,440 --> 00:02:37,400
Speaker 2: some of those signs are encouraging. We've now got fewer

53
00:02:37,440 --> 00:02:40,040
Speaker 2: homes that are damp, we've got fewer homes that are moldy.

54
00:02:40,400 --> 00:02:42,720
Speaker 2: Two thirds of homes now have a heat pump. So

55
00:02:43,080 --> 00:02:45,320
Speaker 2: when those are encouraging numbers. But I don't know how

56
00:02:45,360 --> 00:02:48,080
Speaker 2: forcing homes that we don't actually know a huge amount

57
00:02:48,120 --> 00:02:50,680
Speaker 2: about onto the market is necessarily a solution.

58
00:02:50,880 --> 00:02:53,120
Speaker 1: Now, Brad, we have to live it there. I'm really sorry,

59
00:02:53,120 --> 00:02:57,240
Speaker 1: but Brad Olsen, who's Informetric's chief executive and principal economists

60
00:02:57,240 --> 00:02:59,520
Speaker 1: with us this morning talking about those ghost homes and

61
00:02:59,600 --> 00:03:02,600
Speaker 1: more in Really About the Sensystem. For more from News

62
00:03:02,680 --> 00:03:06,200
Speaker 1: talkst B, listen live on air or online, and keep

63
00:03:06,240 --> 00:03:09,000
Speaker 1: our shows with you wherever you go with our podcasts

64
00:03:09,040 --> 00:03:10,120
Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio.