Eric Crampton • Jan 27, 2015 •
Me in The Initiative's weekly newsletter:If councils are determined to commit absurdities, they’re going to do it regardless of fixes to the RMA. After whatever legislative tweaks are enacted, and new Environment Court rulings come through, it will take councils a little while to figure out how to restart the micromanagement that pushes up costs and helps make New … Read More
Eric Crampton • Oct 10, 2014 •
Fun week.I posted over at Interest.co.nz about how reducing regulatory barriers to densification and to expansion in the suburbs could reduce housing costs and consequently improve child poverty outcomes, at least some of which are due to high housing costs.Gareth Morgan posts over at Gareth's World about how I'm kinda evil for being so pro-sprawl and wanting sprawl … Read More
Eric Crampton • Oct 09, 2014 •
A real estate parable.Suppose that, when we bought our house in Khandallah, the realtor told us about a particularly nice feature of our house. A few doors down lived a lovely grandmotherly type who adored young children. She was in her early 50s, inde... Read More
Eric Crampton • Oct 02, 2014 •
I suggest, in this week's NZ Initiative column at interest.co.nz, that addressing housing affordability could be part of John Key's recently announced policy focus on child poverty. When housing costs take up over forty or fifty percent of many poor households' incomes, what's left for other needs?A teaser:When land supply, both expansion at the city fringes and land zoned for … Read More
Eric Crampton • Sep 10, 2014 •
I think I might have a partial solution to NIMBY blocking of urban intensification: a way of paying them at the margin for disamenity effects.The one-line version: if your neighbour develops, your taxes drop.Here's how we do it. Or at least the initial... Read More
Eric Crampton • Sep 10, 2014 •
If the particular character of a neighbourhood is all that important, why don't residents protect it using covenants?A reader emails me:I don’t think it is Nimbyism if a neighbourhood wants to protect its own character. What is Nimbyism is denying others beyond your neighbourhood the same opportunity you had.It seems counter intuitive to think a place like Houston which has … Read More
Seamus Hogan • Aug 30, 2014 •
There are two main ways people can meet their accommodation needs: renting and owner occupancy. Both involve making annual payments for housing services either in rental payments, interest payments on a mortgage, or to the extent that an owner occupier... Read More
Eric Crampton • Aug 27, 2014 •
I filled in for Matthew Hooton in the NBR's Opening Salvo this week. It's only in the print edition; here's a taste. [Update: here for subscribers]We can count the costs of apartment stories left unbuilt. In a well-functioning market, developers will build upwards until the cost of an additional storey roughly equals the extra revenue the developer gets from … Read More
Eric Crampton • Jul 03, 2014 •
I'll be attending Alain Bertaud's talk, though I'm not sure whether I'll be doing it here in Christchurch or up in Wellington. I hope to see many of you there. Mobile and affordable: The future of our citiesIn recent decades, urban planners have been inventing all sorts of abstract objectives to justify their plans for our future cities: smart … Read More
Eric Crampton • Jul 01, 2014 •
As I’ve been tardy in hoisting posts up to Dismal Science while hitting a few deadlines lately, here are a few of the best from the past week.* Melbourne, population a bit lower than New Zealand, has been consenting at least 1.8 times as many new dwellings as New Zealand lately. They’re doing it explicitly to avoid … Read More