DBH market rents "improved"?

[spurner]

The DBH market rent site has been changed/updated. And I received this email:

Improved Market Rent Data - update from DBH

Hello - As you know the Department published 'market rent' data on its website. This is used by landlords and tenant to find out the average rent in an area. The data has now been improved and offers information on 298 areas in New Zealand. The new data breaks down areas like Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington into more precise districts. The change was in response to customer demand.

Visit http://www.dbh.govt.nz/market-rent to see the new data.

If you have any questions or need more information please let me know.

Cheers, Jeff

Jeff Montgomery
Manager Client Services Group

However I have now noticed that my chosen suburb of investment does not appear on the new statistics. Even Wellington City has completely disappeared!

What's going on?!

[xris]

The DBH market rent site has been changed/updated. And I received this email:



However I have now noticed that my chosen suburb of investment does not appear on the new statistics. Even Wellington City has completely disappeared!

What's going on?!

Quite right - they have been improved enormously. It took long enough though, but good to see it has now happened.

xris

[drelly]

Not at all improved for the Whangarei area! They have lumped all the outlying coastal areas into one group and combined some of the most expensive areas with some of the cheapest. It wasn't great before but at least it was consistant. Call me a conspiracy theorist but it's almost like they have attempted to reduce the appearance of rental increases or just tried to confuse the issue. Why clump suburbs together at all? If they have information on each area, then just list them separately!

[xris]

Not at all improved for the Whangarei area! They have lumped all the outlying coastal areas into one group and combined some of the most expensive areas with some of the cheapest. It wasn't great before but at least it was consistant. Call me a conspiracy theorist but it's almost like they have attempted to reduce the appearance of rental increases or just tried to confuse the issue. Why clump suburbs together at all? If they have information on each area, then just list them separately!

I think you will find there is no conspiracy theory, just a lack of ability amongst the staff involved.

xris

[spurner]

Drelly I think you're right, I've had a suspicion that is the case for awhile now. Market rents from other sources usually appear higher than the DBH website and I can't help but feel the DBH is manipulating things in such a way so as to project rentals lower than they are in reality.

Newtown (the area I was referring to before as being missing), has now reappeared on their website, but is now combined with Berhampore and Vogeltown instead of Brooklyn. They are completely different markets.

Here is the evidence:

Berhampore: 2br for $310pw, 4br for $600pw
Newtown: 2br for $350pw, $380pw, $400pw, $400pw. 4br for $600pw, $650pw
Vogeltown: 2br for $495pw

I have only taken info from TM, and I have used only 2br's and 4br's to keep things simpler. This is a summary of average:

br's DBH TM
2 $296pw $389pw
4 $523pw $617pw

One would have to be very lucky to get even a basic place for less than the DBH's upper quartile figures. Nearly every advertisement is listed at above the DBH upper quartile.

I know this post is not particularly scientific nor in-depth, but something certainly smells fishy, and it's coming from the DBH pencil pushers and statistical manipulators.

How do the figures stack up in other peoples areas?

[xris]

There is no secret to this mis-information and inaccurate data so let me help.

The areas defined by DBH are/were silly. They linked suburds together that should not have been put together. This is because the boffins at the dbh bond centre just guessed if they did not know a city or town. So, for example, Wanganui suburbs would be all muddled up.

Next, the only data they have to go on is that supplied by the bond centre which in turn comes from the bond lodgement forms. Some landlords put in addresses of rentals with no suburb. What happens? dbh guesses which area-block the data should go into. And, some landlords insert the correct suburb but that suburb does not appear in one of their pre-planned area-blocks. So again, the clever people at dbh just guess. This is why the stats are all over the place.

In some places in NZ the area-blocks have been greatly improved, allowing the bond lodgemnt data to be correctly used; in some other parts of the country this has yet to happen. (Although if no suburb is written on the bond lodgement form the clever staff members probably still guess where to put it).

As I said before, there is no conspiracy theory, just a lack of ability at dbh.

So, when you were looking at the 'official' rental stats for north shore did you ever think that they were riddled with data from Mt Wellington, Mangare, and so on? No, of course not, who would?

Is it not an utter disgrace that the whole country has been led a merry dance like this for so long? Well, you said it! What should happen? Heads role? Surely not?

To be as serious as possible, this is really a major stuff-up. Our taxes are used to pay these people for this rubbish. What do they do? They sit on their bottoms and make up statistics while honest members or the public and even the media rely on the figures supplied to go about their daily business. I would not even be surprised if other govt bodies have used this data to formulate other legislation.

Surely names should be named and heads should role? How much waste goes into paying these people/this person responsible?

Hope this all helps.

xris

[Gerrard]

I can't help but feel the DBH is manipulating things in such a way so as to project rentals lower than they are in reality.

For what purpose?

[Green Fish]

For the purpose of misleading landlords into charging lower rents, thereby assisting their comrades.

I've been to Wellington a few times. Newtown is in valley, close to to town. Vogeltown is in a similar area, but up in the hills. Berampore is more out in the back area. I take Spurner to rank these suburbs as: (1) Vogeltown; (2) Newtown; (3) Berampore.

If you're a Tenancy Services clerk, keen on doing your little bit of social engineering, then a property that is borderline Vogeltown / Newtown will be classified as Vogeltown. This pulls down the average rent in Vogeltown and leaves the average rent for Newtown unchanged.

But this is not so easy in Wellington, as it is the only city council which has an official map of its suburbs. In other words, there are no grey areas.

[xris]

Hello Green Fish,

And I suppose you believe the royal family arranged the assassination of Princess Diana?

xris

[Green Fish]

I do, and I'm eternally grateful to them.