Auckland Central MP Chlöe Swarbrick has described the property market as "a runaway gravy train that now 1.4 million New Zealanders cannot afford a ticket on" - and says more changes are needed to get Kiwis into houses.
The comments come as she prepares to lay out the Green Party's plans to solve New Zealand's housing crisis at a public meeting alongside co-leader Marama Davidson on Friday night.
Swarbrick is far from alone in believing New Zealand's real estate market is out of control. A recent Bloomberg ranking saw our housing bubble named the riskiest in the OECD, and experts warn it's unlikely values will reduce anytime soon.
While the Government has introduced measures to cool the market by cracking down on property investors and giving first-home buyers a leg up, Swarbrick says not enough has been done.
She told The AM Show she and Davidson will reveal a pathway to decommodifying the housing market at Friday night's meeting.
"For the past 30 years - my entire life - the housing market has become effectively a runaway gravy train that now 1.4 million New Zealanders cannot afford a ticket on.
"You've got a third of the population that rent and you have also got a third of the housing stock owned by people who own between four and more than 20 homes in this country."
Swarbrick says the only way to fix things is by admitting things have to change.
"I think one of the big challenges we have had, at least in my time in politics, is that no politician or no political party bar the Greens has been willing to say that house prices have to drop," she said.
"If we continue with the so-called 'sustained moderation' that has been put on the table by even our Prime Minister - that is around 4 percent per annum increases in house prices - we are looking at the better part of a century until wages catch up to the level of affordability we had in the early 2000s."
Beyond helping Kiwis into houses, Swarbrick says a drop in prices is needed to protect the country from a property bubble that could burst and wreak havoc on our economy.
"Local economists and even the Reserve Bank of New Zealand are warning there's a bit of a speculative bubble forming potentially here. It is far more dangerous for us to end up in a situation where we have financial stability completely threatened because of the amount of speculation we've enabled."
AM Show host Duncan Garner argued our financial stability may actually be inextricably linked to the success of our housing market - the value of which now amounts to $1.5 trillion, according to CoreLogic.
"Eight-hundred thousand people have equity. If you want to reverse that and turn it on its head, you will have an economic crisis like you've never seen before."
But Swarbrick pointed out that even if house prices in Auckland dropped $100,000 tomorrow, that would still be an increase on last year's values.
"I'm not stating that we need to immediately, overnight have this massive drop, but what I'm saying is we risk exactly that happening if we don't tackle this head on - we've had a runaway housing market for too long.
"We've pulled forward any of the potential investment that we may have put into infrastructure to enable more homes [to be built]. We've also continued to say that these houses should go elsewhere - not in our backyard. We need to deal with this."
Swarbrick and Davidson will speak at a public meeting at the Ellen Melville Centre from 6pm on Friday night, and discuss "what tools need to be used next, to help people into warm, dry, and secure homes".
