> Being a small isolated country probably plays part in the high cost of living; not so easy to import (or export) physical goods.
It's got nothing to do with the cost of goods or labour. NZ house prices are basically all zoning, the underlying cost of building a house is nothing compared to the value of the land while there's empty fields surrounding it that you can't even park a caravan on.
There are plenty of factors. Most of the country has reasonably temperate weather all year round, especially on the more populous north island. Then you have the just get on with it throw it together attitude that used to dominate the rural areas, so you're starting from a really low point.
Starting from that low point it seems that its been hard to raise the bar. The cost of materials must play a part there. There's also been ongoing and continual issues with the companies that actually do the building and/or manufacture the materials being both intertwined and in monopoly positions.
I just had my house extended. Any new windows had to be double glazed, which is only a recent change. In many European countries its now triple. The new parts of my house are considerably warmer, and the original build was only 15 years old!
> The barefoot thing is just cultural, not because people can't afford shoes.
Yeah, I have a hard time persuading my kids to wear shoes. He could be describing my town and its not a poor area at all.
I've been cold more in NZ than anywhere else, and I don't get cold all that easily. Only lived in South Island though, where the average is colder than Western Europe (but the housing much worse). North Island is indeed warmer.
Maybe (part of) the problem is just that "one size fits all" set of laws doesn't really suffice if there are fairly significant differences in e.g. climate within a country.
The state of housing in NZ is indeed abysmal; I don't know why it's so bad.
Being a small isolated country probably plays part in the high cost of living; not so easy to import (or export) physical goods.
It's really hard to directly compare "wealth" between countries though, as many aspects of the system are often different; healthcare and general social security are the obvious things to point out there.