The Government has effectively left nothing "undone" to tackle sky-rocketing house prices in Auckland, Finance Minister Bill English says

English acknowledged the city's importance as New Zealand's largest, but noted the "manageable" housing markets in the rest of the country.

"Two-thirds of New Zealand doesn't live in Auckland and actually their housing issues are pretty manageable.

"The best thing we can do for low and middle income families in Auckland is to allow the place to grow - growing up or growing out, that's the choice for Auckland to make," Bill English said.

"In fact, yesterday the housing affordability index showed housing affordability improving quite significantly outside Auckland," he said at the launch of the Ormiston Town Centre development in south-east Auckland.

"The best thing we can do for low and middle income families in Auckland is to allow the place to grow - growing up or growing out, that's the choice for Auckland to make," English said.

"You see in the media every day now commentators ranting about how the Government should do something about the housing market. Well I think Mayor Len [Brown] would agree there's pretty much not really anything left undone that can be done that happens fast enough.

"Even a greenfields development like this ... it's taken years to get here, just because these are generational decisions."

English said the Government would increasingly look for ways to aid development in the region.

"A big part of the next phase of development in Auckland is what the Government does and what Auckland Property does with its extensive land holdings. We will certainly be increasingly looking for development partners, people with the understanding of community building as well as the commercial and economic aspects of property development.

"Government has been a very passive owner of property in Auckland because we've been trapped by the political imperative that you can't sell anything, which is why our land is the least developed.

"A big part of dealing with housing issues here is Government cranking up re-development of its own property and not just lecturing everybody else about how they should do it."

Auckland mayor Len Brown agreed that there was "no simple answer to get the types of outcomes that we want" in regards to housing.

He said speeding up consent processes and creating infrastructure would help moderate house prices.