Brad Olsen: Infometrics Principal Economist on the ghost houses revealed in the latest census data

There's several possible reasons behind a rise in the number of homes empty on Census night. 

The latest data shows just more than 110 thousand homes were empty, up from just under 100 thousand in 2018. 

Infometrics Principal Economist Brad Olsen says part of that could be due to Cyclone Gabrielle flood levels, and high levels of construction.  

He told Ryan Bridge that some of the biggest areas with the largest increase in “ghost homes” were Auckland, Gisborne, and Hawke’s Bay. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ghost houses. Would a tax on these houses work to
fix the problem. Choe Swallbrick has previously said that she
would be in supportive one. You've got some housing charitable
trusted being supported one. More than one hundred thousand houses
were empty in the latest census, the so called ghost houses.
Brad Elson is the Informetric's principal economs. He's with us
this morning, Brad, Good morning, good morning. Good to have

(00:22):
you on the show. So is this all like evil
rich people sitting on houses of vacation homes or what
are they?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Well? And this is the thing often we don't have
that good of an idea. Every five years in the
census we get a bit of an update on what
we call unoccupied dwellings, so dwellings that had no one
in them on census night. And we know that looking
through the numbers, around about half of those were where
people do live in them, they just weren't there on
Census night. The other remaining portion, which is like you say,

(00:53):
around about one hundred thousand we're empty on sensusnight and
don't normally have anyone living in them. But there is
a variety of reasons that could be. They could be
holiday homes or batches. They could be because they're undergoing renovations.
Looking through some of the figures, some of the biggest
are the areas that had the biggest increase in so

(01:13):
called ghost homes or completely empty dwellings were in the
likes of Auckland, Gibson, and Hawk's Bay. And what that
leads me to believe is that actually there's a not
insignificant part of those apparent ghost homes that will probably
cyclone damage, that have a flood damaged, or particularly in Auckland,
they might well have been homes that had recently been
built but hadn't quite moved on yet. So I really

(01:34):
don't know if we're actually going to be able to
tax something that we can't normally see. It's a big project,
big proposal that people talk about, but I'm not sure
we could actually have the information to do it no good.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
It sounds like a too hard basket situation. And do
we actually know that if we if all of these
homes aren't be they batches or whatever, if they were
released onto the market, what would have helped to solve
or ease a housing crisis in an area, or not
have the quantity in say Queenstown, to actually make a difference.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
I mean, any additional housing is useful, but again, you know,
it's not the sort of thing I don't think that
anyone would propose that government would come in and sort
of necessarily force these houses into work. Again, some of
them are under renovations and similar they might actually not
be all that sits of purpose for a lot of people.
One of the encouraging signs we actually had in the

(02:24):
census was that some of the policies that have gone
by the likes of healthy Home standards have actually quite
substantially lifted housing quality across the country. So you know,
some of those signs are encouraging. We've now got fewer
homes that are damp, we've got fewer homes that are moldy.
Two thirds of homes now have a heat pump. So
when those are encouraging numbers. But I don't know how

(02:45):
forcing homes that we don't actually know a huge amount
about onto the market is necessarily a solution.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Now, Brad, we have to live it there. I'm really sorry,
but Brad Olsen, who's Informetric's chief executive and principal economists
with us this morning talking about those ghost homes and
more in Really About the Sensystem. For more from News
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