The biggest issue Auckland faced was the lack of people living in the CBD, Ockham said. (File photo) Photo: Supplied / Ruth Kuo
Incentives to build in Auckland's CBD would do more to boost affordability than planning changes, an Auckland apartment developer says.
The council's Plan Change 120, which was set to require two million more homes, was weakened by the government last week.
Housing Minister Chris Bishop called the proposed plan "divisive" when announcing the government's changes.
But Ockham Residential's Mark Todd told Morning Report the plan would not meaningfully increase housing supply or affordability.
Ockham residential co-founder Mark Todd. (File photo) Photo: www.ockham.co.nz
Improved supply and lower prices were due to the Auckland unitary plan removing density controls more than a decade ago, "not because of any policy that's come out of Wellington in the last eight years."
House prices had dropped 30 per cent and with wage inflation over the last four years, houses are about 34 per cent more affordable than they were, Todd said.
The government would do better to focus on the cost of improving incomes than lowering house prices, he said.
"I think planning's done the heavy lifting that it can to reduce housing costs and enable supply - the rest is on the income side.
"We need to seriously focus on how we can increase family incomes over the next 15 years, rather than trying to continually believe we're going to lower the cost of housing."
The cost of building houses had stabilised, he said.
"It's not getting more expensive, but nor is it getting cheaper."
Todd said the sector had definitely slowed.
"I think that's actually a good thing. I can't see prices around rebounding in any significant manner or a steep rise over the next five years, but that's actually success.
"What we need now is to focus on building, planning our cities properly and leveraging the billions of dollars that have been spent upgrading, things like the CRL, our bus lanes, our cycleways.
"We've got to start taking seriously the fact that the free market doesn't plan cities never has, never will."
The biggest issue Auckland faced was the lack of people living in the CBD, which was less than half of what it should be, he said.
Traffic on Auckland's Queen St. (File photo) Photo: 123rf.com
The city needed to decide on how and where it wanted to more growth, rather than the current "agnostic" approach to location.
"There's no tier one designation that housing being built in the CBD or other high-value locations where you want people is encouraged or supported."
Priority areas should be identified, then incentivised for developers.
"A good start would be you don't have to pay connection fees to connect to the water, which is currently $20,000 per unit.
"Development contributions should be removed from priority areas and it shouldn't cost anything to connect to the electricity network, which routinely costs me half a million dollars for an apartment building."
Todd rebuffed calls for car parking requirements for new developments.
It should be put to Aucklanders not mandated by central government, but Todd said the call had already been made during two years of hearings to pass the Unitary Plan.
He was personally strongly against the move.
"If you legislate two car parks for every house, what you get is a car-focused urban form."
"95 percent of all buildings in Auckland and all terraced housing have car parking, but at least there's the opportunity to build buildings without car parking. Ockham Residential built five buildings in the last ten years that have zero car parking, all in appropriate locations.
"I think it's a matter of choice and free market. There's many suburbs and high-value central locations that haven't had parking for on-street parking for generations. Roads are not for private car parking," he said.
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