Housing reforms mean a free market and 'extremely ugly buildings', developer says ( www.rnz.co.nz )

Some quite out of touch comments in here, I think. Saying "unlikely they would imitate the stylish apartment blocks that can be seen in the likes of Paris or Rome." when a large chunk of our population currently don't have a hope of ever owning a home is pretty elitist, in my view.

They also mention 50m2 as being considered the minimum for banks to lend to you, I live in a three bedroom house that's 100, a living space for one person can definitely be less than half that.

I really hope we can get more dwellings built that are affordable for a single person, that's something currently missing from our market, I feel.

Rangelus ,

The only thing I'm concerned about is the continued creep of housing developments into productive farmland.

If developers want to increase density of housing in current areas, that's a good thing! I don't particularly care about how stylish a development is at this point in time. Besides, current cookie cutter housing is all ugly anyway.

njm1314 ,

Developers just keep churning out the same bland cookie cutter designs for the last twenty years so excuse me if I don't value their opinions

Ilovethebomb OP ,

And that's kinda what we need right now, just mass produced, low cost housing that people can actually afford.

njm1314 ,

Except it is neither low cost nor affordable.

Ilovethebomb OP ,

How do you know that?

njm1314 ,

Because I've been alive and a renter in the last twenty years?

Ilovethebomb OP ,

And that means these hypothetical new builds will be unaffordable?

You're going to have to explain your reasoning here, we've had a shortage of housing for a very long time, how will ending that shortage not help?

njm1314 ,

Who's talking about new builds?

Ilovethebomb OP ,

The news article you're commenting on?

njm1314 ,

Yet my comment wasn't. Clearly.

Ilovethebomb OP ,

You didn't read the article, did you?

Xcf456 ,

He says ugly buildings, implying what they look like aesthetically from the outside, but he actually seems to be talking about designing apartments to actually be functional to live in, which I agree with. It gets even more important the smaller the size I reckon

There's a huge difference between ones done by private developers and kainga ora/kiwibuild imo. The former are more often investment units to extract tenant wages first and foremost. Storage, building amenities, light etc all non considerations. People I know in kiwibuild apartments love them.

The rest of what he says is the same old garbage and speaks to the risks of the govts approach. If nimby councils reject density around transport hubs as theyll be able to do under this, theyll push lower density sprawl further out and it'll be worse and more expensive for everyone.

Ilovethebomb OP ,

Yeah, I have a friend who has a Kiwibuild apartment, they have a ridiculous amount of cupboards, a washer/dryer, storage in the basement for his mountain bike.

That's kinda on the buyer though, even if you're buying off plans, all this is on the plans you sign off on.

Xcf456 ,

To an extent, choice isn't a huge feature of our housing market. That will certainly change eventually if theres a big increase in supply, but therell be a lot of poorly thought out stuff in the housing stock to get to that point

Ilovethebomb OP ,

I'm going to be honest here, the constant doom and gloom from you and others in this thread is kinda sad. Every time the "other team" does something even remotely good, you immediately assume it won't work, and set out to explain why.

Any step towards more intensification will mean getting closer to ending the housing crisis, let's celebrate that shall we?

Fizz ,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

I don't mind since ugly buildings . It's not like Auckland looks nice anyway.

some_guy ,

You know whose opinion I don’t need on housing? People who make money in the housing market.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • newzealand@lemmy.nz
  • test
  • worldmews
  • mews
  • All magazines
    •