Is there anyone left, apart from the government, that thinks banning foreigners buying houses is a bad idea?

Westpac are the latest to tell us how it will hit the housing markets of Auckland and Queenstown. Just like everyone said it would at select committee stage when hundreds lined up. From regions, to towns, to councils, to companies, all outlining their own expectation of what sort of damage it would do to their place, or their business.

The government argued that banning foreigners would make it easier for first home buyers to get into the market. They did this without ever tangibly proving it, and they didn’t tangibly prove it because it can't be.

The reason Westpac have pointed out Auckland and Queenstown is, of course, because foreigners, by in large, buy high end homes.

Not the sort of home your first home buyer is after.

And here's an often forgotten point, the only way you make a home more affordable is to make it cheaper. To make it cheaper you need the entire market to go backwards.

And then if you want it to go backwards, just how backwards do you want it to go?

And when it does go backwards, what's that doing to the value of the properties of the vast majority of people that already own their own homes?

And not just own their own homes, but the value in those homes to fund their retirements.

66 percent of New Zealanders are property owners, and billions upon billions of dollars of savings is tied up in those properties.

And the more reliant we are on the savings in those homes, the less reliant we are on the government for retirement.

By tanking a market, you tank savings, and buy yourself a retirement headache for decades to come.

Why would a government want to destroy value built up over generations? Why would a government want to put in peril the retirement of thousands of New Zealanders who have used their houses to save?

Was 20 percent a year unsustainable by way of growth?

Of course it wasn’t. But that was never going to last, it never has, and wasn’t going to this time.

But thinking that banning foreigners had much to do with it was tossed out the window by way of a theory when the stats came out, and foreign buyers made up only three percent of the market.

They have invented a culprit and punished them for it. But in doing that, unduly and adversely affected major centres like Queenstown and Auckland and all the ensuing jobs, and services that go with the investment in housing.

It was short sighted then, and the banks commentary proves nothing has changed.