The Hard Stuff With Nigel Latta - Affording a Home

You look at a lot of horrible houses, and the saddest thing about that is once you leave you realise you actually can't afford to buy that house. And you didn't want to live in it — it's horrible — but even if you wanted to, you couldn't.

– First home buyer Sherilyn expresses her frustration at high house prices

The link between poor quality housing and health is well-established.

– Conrad LaPointe from community housing provider Habitat For Humanity, late in this episode

... our protection of tenants falls far short of countries where renting is the norm. In Germany, where more than half the population rent, rental periods are indefinite, and the longer you live in a place, the longer the notice to evict becomes. Rent increases are restricted by law. Should New Zealand tenants be given more rights?

– Presenter Nigel Latta

Fast forward twenty, thirty years: the majority of the population are going to be generation rent; the majority of the population are going to be millennials. And the political balance will shift at some point in time. If we don't solve it now, there's going to be generational warfare.

– Shamubeel Eaqub, economist and co-author of book Generation Rent

On average, 40 per cent of Auckland sales are to property investors, a lot of whom got their first house before the affordability crisis began.

– Presenter Nigel Latta

More than a third of people rent, and we're looking at a whole generation of people unable to afford their own home. We're consistently ranked near the top of the world's least affordable countries to purchase a house ... the average house price in New Zealand is equivalent to almost six years worth of household income. Three years is considered affordable.

– Presenter Nigel Latta

...we've both got really good jobs, so I don't know that we'd get the same opportunites with our work that we currently have now. And I feel it's unfair to have to move out of what is home, just to be able to get onto the housing market — that seems unfair.

– East Auckland renter Linda, on the idea shifting to a cheaper area in order to buy a home, early in this episode4.20)

That's really what The Hard Stuff is about: making these big, serious issues easier to understand. We try to be non-partisan, to fight through all the posturing and opinions and focus on the facts as much as possible.

– Nigel Latta writes about the series, The Sunday-Star Times, 12 August 2016