Building activity needs to ramp up in New Zealand as population requirements look set to outweigh the country's housing supply, BNZ says.
New Zealand would need up to an extra 50,000 homes to fix the country's housing shortages based on current population growth, the bank said in its Eco-Pulse report.
BNZ chief economist Mike Jones said housing supply wasn't responding to demand.
"If it's become clearer that we're falling short, the natural next question to ask is 'where?' After all, we know that rates of home building and population growth vary up and down the country," he said in a note.
"We estimate Auckland will make up the largest chunk of the absolute shortfall, unsurprising given its large population... we can see the biggest proportionate shortfalls this year are likely to be in the Bay of Plenty, Otago, Waikato, Auckland and Southland," he added.
Jones said BNZ expected only about 35,000 homes to be constructed this year.
"Abstracting from the exact numbers, the important context here is that the expected underbuild this year is coming from a position closer to broad balance than, for example, the pre-existing shortages of 2015-2020," he said.
The Government plans to introduce a raft of new measures in a bid to boost supply, including the implementation of the Going for Housing Growth policy and making medium density residential standards optional for councils.
Newshub.
