In 2005 scrapping interest on student loans won Labour votes from students with debt – obviously – but also from parents and grandparents worried debt was stopping their kids from saving or getting into a house and may be driving them overseas to earn enough strong currency to pay it off more quickly. The theory was that the spiralling cost of housing and high interest rates for first-home buyers – not to mention competition from investors/speculators – was having a similar effect on nest- building. But even the shared-equity scheme – targeted at city dwellers in Auckland, Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch and Queenstown with household incomes of between $55,000 and $85,000 – is not reaching far enough down the income scale. The new plan is to build houses on state-owned land, with families owning the building – often a third or less of the total value of the house and land – while the state retains the land. Taking the $350,000 Hobsonville yardstick, and assuming the underlying land is worth $200,000, then a mortgage of $150,000 – about $300 a week – should be in reach of the average-income household. Read More