25 Nov 2020

Reserve Bank should interfere in hot housing market

From First Up, 5:53 am on 25 November 2020

The Government is calling on the Reserve Bank to step up and help cool the piping-hot housing market as it tries to push prices down. Many commentators had predicted house prices would plummet as a result of Covid but the opposite has been the case, with the median price in Auckland now 1-million dollars. Nationally it's climbed to 725-thousand dollars. Finance Minister Grant Robertson thinks it's time the Reserve Bank should be looking at the impact of its actions on house prices, but the bank says that's not its problem. Joining Nathan Rarere to try and understand this convoluted fiscal fracas is Infometrics senior economist Brad Olsen.