Single-lever policy simulation · immigration

Construction visa allocation

5%→18%10-year projection

This report models the effect of raising the construction visa share from 5% to 18% — with every other government policy left unchanged — on housing, projected over 10 years.

Bottom line

Improves Housing supply gap, Rent pressure and House prices, with little downside in the model.

A single lever moved in isolation — which no real government does. Figures are modelled projections, not predictions. How the model works →

Direct effects

▼Housing supply gap

strong improvement

Why: Construction sector labour shortage is a binding constraint on housebuilding targets — each 1pp shift in visa weighting feeds directly into build-out capacity

⏱ Effect develops over 1–2 years

Knock-on effects

Reached indirectly, as the direct effects propagate through the system. Ordering reflects how the effect spreads, not a literal sequence in time.

▼Rent pressuremild

▼House pricesmild

Model output — exact figures

Housing supply gap75 → 60 (-15)

Rent pressure72 → 66 (-6)

House prices65 → 59 (-6)

Index points on a 0–100 scale. Lower is better for pressure metrics; higher is better for outcomes like GDP and satisfaction.

See the full report for this change →Open the full simulator