Larry Williams Drive

As I noted yesterday, the biggest single contributor to our ginormous inflation rate was housing.House ownership alone contributed 18.5 percent to inflation.But it's interesting to note that a large part of the housing inflation and indeed all inflation can be sheeted home to legislative changes. Some estimate the effect is up to 50 percent.It's easy to see this in housing. A new property tax regime has just been enacted by the IRD that will have an immediate effect on costs and benefits that will immediately fuel inflation.We can see it in all the tenancy rule changes that resulted in rent increases that were dramatic enough that a rent freeze had to be temporarily enacted in the pandemic.Healthy Home legislation caused a rush of work and purchasing.The housing market in New Zealand is so huge and all-consuming that any change across its breadth has an immediate effect.Which comes back to a question that many have asked.  Why, in the middle of a pandemic, when everything is unprecedented, when everything is