24/06/2026
Labor’s housing plan is built to fail, and New Zealand already ran the experiment.
Remove negative gearing, tighten capital gains tax, and you don’t help first home buyers. You spook investors out of the market, the people who fund the rental supply and the new construction products that first home buyers usually have to buy into.
NZ tried almost exactly this in 2021, stripping interest deductibility from residential investors. Rents climbed, not the token few dollars a week the modelling promised. It worked so badly the incoming government reversed it, with full deductibility restored by April 2025.
There’s a deeper problem too. If building costs keep rising on the back of higher labour costs, but the policy goal is for house prices to fall, the numbers stop adding up. No developer funds construction at a loss, and no lender funds the developer. Supply dries up at the exact moment we need more of it.
You can’t tax your way to affordability. You build your way there.
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