An international survey has ranked Auckland's housing market one of the ten least affordable in the world, Radio New Zealand reports.
The survey compared house prices to incomes, deeming cities with median house prices that were three times the median income or less to be affordable. It compared nearly 400 cities, including 86 that have populations of a million or more.
Auckland's housing has been ranked severely unaffordable in each of the eleven annual surveys so far and one of the authors, Christchurch researcher Hugh Pavletich, said it was worse this year than it had ever been.
“The housing has got progressively worse and dramatically worse these past two years to the extent that it is now 8.2 times household incomes. Auckland is in a housing crisis and the politicians are certainly not acting fast enough to address the issue.”
Initiatives such as Auckland's special housing areas, which since 2013 have allowed for fast-tracked development in certain parts of the region, had helped, but development had still been slowed down by debate over who should pay for infrastructure, such as water pipes, and the consenting process, he said.
Auckland Mayor Len Brown said the city's housing bottleneck would soon be eased given the number of building consents in the pipeline and the number of presold apartments being built.
Mr Brown told Morning Report up to 11,000 houses and apartments were likely to be built in Auckland this year.