ACT leader David Seymour's bid to allow pubs to open early to show matches flopped on Tuesday when the Green Party rejected it.

For the first time in New Zealand's history, home ownership has become the privilege of the wealthy, says ACT leader David Seymour.

Seymour said house prices in Auckland, and to a lesser extent other parts of the country, had risen so high, so fast that owning one was increasingly a function of the wealth of a young person's parents.

"For the first time we have a situation in New Zealand where property ownership is heritable," Seymour said.

He pointed to the way his circle of friends had made it into their own homes.

"I look at most of my friends, lawyers, doctors or engineers. All of them went to Auckland Grammar, or St Cuthberts. All of them have done it with parental help."

With house prices rising up to a reported $1000 a day "houses in Auckland are earning more than people", he said.

ACT is trying to get the other political parties to agree to a referendum on the future of NZ Super, which the party says is unsustainable in the face of an ageing population .

ANZ's retirement calculator suggests that to live decently in retirement, a person would need to save about $622,000 in the absence of NZ Super.

Seymour admitted that for young people to be able to save that amount New Zealand needs affordable housing.

Buying a house can mean so much debt that saving for retirement looks a forlorn hope, he said.

"There are a lot of people of my age group saying you want us to pay twice as much for our houses, you want us to save twice the money to retire, and I have to pay off my student loan," Seymour said.

But Hayden Duncan, chief executive of real estate agency Harcourts, disagreed. He said property ownership had not become "heritable" despite falling home ownership rates.

"It is not at a point where home ownership is for the privileged few only," he said.

"There's never been a time in the history of home ownership that people haven't had to work hard for their deposit."

"There is a real property ladder now. You need to start where it is appropriate for you, and you have to work your way up."

Christchurch property expert Hugh Pavletich said it used to be quite easy to buy a home and it could be again.

"In 1978 I bought my first house for $24,000 with a mortgage of $20,000 on a single earner income of $8000 a year. The house was three times my income and the mortgage was two and a half ," he said.

Auckland house prices are a multiple of over eight times median income, and nationally, the figure is just under six times.

Auckland house prices were well into bubble territory, with only one solution to the problem that would not hurt, Pavletich said.

"We need to build our way out of this bubble and not follow Ireland's example by busting out of it," he said.

Pavletich said he had confidence in the Government's long-term strategy to fix the dearth of new home-building, but it needed to happen faster.

"It will come back. We know there has been no sustained bubble in history. We are at last seeing our housing production increasing," he said.

But Pavletich said the fix was coming too late for a generation either shut out of home ownership for too long, or who have succumbed to what he called "mortgage slavery".

"Home ownership is hugely important for family formation," he said.

"It is unconscionable to have screwed up the lives of so many people."

Seymour said winning his referendum was "mathematically possible"..

But Prime Minister John Key has pledged there will be no change to NZ Super under his Government.