Economy Watch

Would it be possible and/or desirable to engineer a housing market correction?

Episode Summary

Dipping our toes into the podcasting world, interest.co.nz probes whether it would be possible and desirable for the government and Reserve Bank to deliberately reduce house prices

Episode Notes

Dipping our toes into the world of podcasting, we look at whether it would be possible and/or desirable to engineer a housing market correction.

That means a deliberate move by the government, with the cooperation of the Reserve Bank, local government and banks, to push house prices down.

Such a move would require a government prepared to see house prices fall by a significant amount.

We look at why homeownership is desirable, whether it would be possible to engineer a housing market correction, whether it would be desirable to do so, whether a housing market correction could be controlled, and whether homeowners who would be hardest hit by a correction could be compensated.