Citation
(2012), "Housing costs!", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 61 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijppm.2012.07961daa.004
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2012, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Housing costs!
Article Type: From: International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Volume 61, Issue 4
Poor productivity in the construction sector is part of the reason it costs a third as much again to build a standard home in Auckland compared with Melbourne or the Gold Coast.
The Productivity Commission’s recent report on housing affordability noted that productivity growth in the New Zealand construction sector had flatlined over the past 20 years, underperforming other sectors there and its peers in Australia and Britain.
It highlighted three factors behind that: the difficultly of achieving economies of scale, skill shortages, and too little innovation. It contrasts a “cottage industry” dominated by small, often one-man firms building mainly customised standalone dwellings with Australia, where large firms, building more than 100 homes a year, have twice the market share and more than a third of the homes built are multi-unit dwellings.