What Labour is trying to stop

Labour's proposal to stop all non-residents (except Australians) buying New Zealand properties has been tagged the Chan-Ban. But just how big a problem is Labour trying to address

Check out these figures from the BNZ-REINZ Residential Market Survey of May 2013. The money numbers are on Page 8:

This survey shows that total sales of New Zealand properties to non-residents in the survey period was a massive 3.6% of total sales. The percentage was almost the same in Auckland, where sales to non-residents comprised a mere 3.7%.

Turn it around the other way; 96.4% of property sales nationwide, and 96.3% of Auckland sales were to New Zealand citizens or residents. Labour's claims that over 9% of property sales go to non-residents has been exposed as utterly wrong.

In addition, Rob Hosking from the NBR reckons that Labour has made a fundamental error in calculating the number of non-resident home owners:

It is a mark of how bogus the housing debate has become that Labour’s figures about foreign owners of New Zealand houses almost definitely include former leader Helen Clark and her four  houses.
The current Labour leader and Miss Clark’s successor as MP for Mt Albert, David Shearer, claimed at the weekend there are “more than 11,000 overseas investors [who] own properties here that they don’t live in”.
What Mr Shearer did not say is the figure comes from Inland Revenue’s numbers about “non-resident” taxpayers who pay taxes on houses they  own in New Zealand.
“Non-resident” taxpayers are largely made up of  expatriate New Zealanders and in this context are those who have gone overseas and who have rented out their properties here.  
There are no figures on this but it is a highly common practice – although most who go overseas will have only one, or maybe two, properties to rent out and not, as in the case of Miss Clark, who departed to the United Nations in 2009, who owns four.
The figures do not catch all those who do so, however: some remain New Zealand residents for tax purposes.
And of those who do become non-residents, the data used by Mr Shearer only includes those who made a profit to be taxed – something Mr Shearer did not make clear and may not have understood.

This is dreadfully careless stuff from Mr Shearer and Labour. But it is barely surprising, given the string of own goals that Labour has scored under Mr Shearer's leadership. 

And tucked away in the BNZ report is another wee morsel; whilst 3.7% of home sales have been TO non-residents, 4.5% of sales have been BY non-residents! Yes dear readers; more homes were sold than purchased by non-residents, which means more New Zealanders ended up in homes!

Fran Mold's tenure as Chief of Staff for Mr Shearer has not got off to a good start. We suppose that the only way from here is up.