[philliphaydon]

I left NZ (Auckland) about 16 years ago now. Just going from Auckland>Sydney gained me 25k salary increase. However when I left, searching C# / .NET jobs there was like 3 listed in the last 30 days, vs ~300 in Sydney. While searching PHP in NZ there were ~100 of jobs.

Now I have a family and gonna be moving back to NZ, there isn't a chance in hell I would go to Auckland as the prices are out of control. The house I grew up in my parents bought for ~200k and sold for like ~600k, I recently checked and it last sold for 2.4m 2 years ago.

Prices are slowly coming down now that overseas buyers are barred from purchasing houses. But when you've had decades of housing prices going up and up its difficult for people to accept the house is worth less than when they bought it.

Theres many other problems causing housing prices to be high than just 'zoning'. The amount of effort to build your own house is absurd, people don't want to buy land and get an architect etc, too many rules and regulations, getting approval every step of the way takes forever. And the government is dragging its feet to get houses built themselves.