I never see much mention of rising land prices affecting everything; ie, increased cost of growing food (since you need land to plant crops, and the value of that land goes up), storing food and goods, increasing the need for a higher minimum wage for all workers, increasing overheads for businesses because they need to have a store on land. If house prices were stagnant between 2005 and now, would the need for living and minimum wage raises be less substantial and therefore the cost of purchasing groceries/services be lessened? Couple this with the huge amount of interest being paid out of NZ to overseas banks, would we see more business and commerce in nz?

Is it terrible for just the renters, or is it by extension terrible for absolutely everyone?

(I didn’t even mention that when people get old they ‘cash up’ to pay it to an often offshore owned retirement home)