Housing Minister Nick Smith says that new policies under the Resource Management Act will soon be announced aiming to force councils into working harder to provide land for housing.

The move comes as a reponse to the overheated Auckland housing market, where house prices are now more than nine times the average income - the highest ratio in the world.

Speaking this morning to TVNZ's Q+A programme, Mr Smith said that a lack of available land for housing was "the juggernaut that has been at the core of the Auckland housing problem".

He said a number of agreements would be announced in the "next few weeks" which would put "far tougher" requirements on councils.

"We are pulling every lever we have available to free up supply," he said.

Speaking about recently-released data from Land Information New Zealand showing that foreign owners comprise only a very small percentage of housing sales, Dr Smith said he was confident that data "dispels the myth" of overseas buyers snatching up all the houses.

"We know every single transaction that was bought and settled in six months, and we've found out that overall tax residency was 2.5 per cent, that the number from China was 444 - that's 0.7 per cent.

"This is miles away from those cynical, scapegoating claims that 40 per cent of buyers were people from China."

Dr Smith said the number of properties in Auckland being rented is about 42 per cent - which Dr Smith says has been static for a long time.

He denied that there are still attractive tax incentives for property investors, saying that moves by the government already put in place had cost those who had invested in property $1b.