Advocacy in a Minute | Sentiment Survey 2023 results
During the month of July 2023, Property Council New Zealand had over 150 responses from member companies to our six-monthly sentiment survey. Survey participants came from all parts of the property sector – private, public, iwi and charitable.
62% of respondents indicating it has been significantly harder to get access to capital than it was in late 2022.
Head of Advocacy, Katherine Wilson, explains more.
Business decision making has been hampered by the upcoming General Election, with 68.7% of respondents saying the General Election and the surrounding uncertainty of proposed policies has made business decisions harder in 2023. This is also reflected within the Resource Reform section of the survey with 43.3% saying they will likely re-evaluate projects after the introduction of the legislation and 31.6% saying they were uncertain of the legislative impact.
Anecdotally, we know from history that the closer we get to a General Election creates a vacuum wave of uncertainty as we see issues such as the RMA, Plan Changes and Housing become the political football making business/project decisions more challenging.
The building supply shortages appear to have lifted, with only 26% of respondents saying they found sourcing building supplies more difficult, compared with 77% in November 2022. 37.4% said they found hiring staff more difficult, with 29.8% saying there was no change and 19.1% saying this has gotten easier. This is good news given the figures from November showed hiring staff had become much harder than previously.
57.8% of respondents said their relationship with their local council has gotten easier (5.5%) or had no change (52.3%), with 32.8% saying this relationship has improved over the past six months.
In relation to Build to Rent, 30% of respondents indicated their intention to be involved in the Build to Rent arena within the next two years. In terms of where respondents were planning Build to Rent, 75.6% in Auckland, 29.7% in South Island, 27% in Wellington, and 21.6% in the Central region.
See the full comparative results for November 2022 vs July 2023 below.
Author | Katherine Wilson
As Property Council’s Head of Advocacy, Katherine is tasked with leading our advocacy campaigns at both a regional and national level.
Level-headed and engaging, Katherine has both a law degree from Otago University and an arts degree (majoring in politics) from Auckland University. With solid experience as a policy analyst and advisor in Wellington and Auckland, she has extensive networks and solid analytical skills.
Katherine is hugely dedicated, highly intelligent and committed to ensuring the voice of our members is heard at all levels of governance. She’s also relentlessly positive and enjoys a good chat.
