Life as a Landlord

[Davo36]

Good on you Peter. I hope it makes a difference.

[Bluecoat]

Lets hope so or is it too little too late - knowing labour they are known for these sort of envy tax

Ring-fencing decision has been made and comes into effect 2019.

[Frezzinghot]

Another good article. The clincher is in the final sentence. Because despite the government's best efforts, landlords have the ultimate power - give notice to the tenants, sell up and have fun spending the (usually) untaxed capital gain. And get the weekends back.

Weekends, what are those? Tell me about them, it sounds interesting!

[Bluekiwi]

I would always spend my time on finding a good property manager instead of dealing with tenants

But I have avoided both by leasing most of my rentals to accessible properties for 10 years, job done.

Have a key core of tradesman I can send out to fix things, good plumber, now have good electrician, good painter and handyman, struggling for south Auckland carpenter / jack of all trades though, but Hayden Bird from Maintenanance Masters / Morgs Maintenance can solve most things.

I used to visit my houses and know my tenants, now I keep my distance and life as a Property Investor, not a "Landlord", is great

[Frezzinghot]

I would always spend my time on finding a good property manager instead of dealing with tenants

But I have avoided both by leasing most of my rentals to accessible properties for 10 years, job done.

Have a key core of tradesman I can send out to fix things, good plumber, now have good electrician, good painter and handyman, struggling for south Auckland carpenter / jack of all trades though, but Hayden Bird from Maintenanance Masters / Morgs Maintenance can solve most things.

I used to visit my houses and know my tenants, now I keep my distance and life as a Property Investor, not a "Landlord", is great

yes we have a good team also, but really need a reliable builder friend who could check out homes before purchase. Still managing ourselves and can be a pain at times, but will eventually go property manager once rents climb ( can’t be too long now under the new muppet government kicking us all the time)

fh

[flyernzl]

There is the great myth around that all you have to do is appoint a Property Manager and you will never ever have any rental property problems again.


Oh yes, and pigs will fly.

[Frezzinghot]

There is the great myth around that all you have to do is appoint a Property Manager and you will never ever have any rental property problems again.


Oh yes, and pigs will fly.

agree, no one will ever do a good a job as we, so we think.

[Davo36]

There is the great myth around that all you have to do is appoint a Property Manager and you will never ever have any rental property problems again.


Oh yes, and pigs will fly.

It's mostly been my experience actually. I don't really have to do much at all with the residential tenancies.

[Davo36]

But I have avoided both by leasing most of my rentals to accessible properties for 10 years, job done.

Hmmm, I'd be OK with disabled people, but worried about the 'social' people. For all the reasons people have mentioned here in various posts.

Isn't this a bit like leasing to Housing NZ?

[Bluekiwi]

No it appears, not that I know, to be the opposite of housing NZ handouts.

These seem genuine people who want and need help, apart from one incident over 18 months.

I haven't had much to do with them but things noted so far:

1. They found very old tenant rubbish under house and a friend of theirs came and removed it instead of asking me to do it.
2. Flower beds planted outside.
3. Dealt with one chap after a car accident saw a house through the fence onto the backyard, great guy.
4. Tradey found it hard to contact one tenant as she was adverse to phone calls and didn't answer texts for a week.

Lease agreement has social housing provider being responsible for tenant damage, I just cover normal wear and tear.
They inspect property every 3 or 6 months as well.

[flyernzl]

‘May you live in interesting times’ has been the blessing and the curse over the years. It has indeed been interesting times recently for residential landlords.

From the extension of a range of taxation rules to the threatened implementation of others, from the passing of the Healthy Homes so-called Guarantee bill to the death without a whimper of the Wellington Council housing warrant of fitness requirements, from the popping of the meth detection industry scam to the arrival of the asbestos scare, we have barely had time turn open-mouthed and goggle-eyed from one crisis to stare in amazement at the next. We move rapidly from one crisis to another. We suffer one disturbance and shock after another. Regularly, I now meet fellow landlords who tell me that they are indeed floundering to keep up with it all. I know how they feel.

Even those who purport to understand these changes and administer them – WorkSafe, MBIE and Tenancy Services – are tending to appear confused, either giving conflicting advice or even refusing to answer when asked specific questions about the latest changes in legislation. It has taken WorkSafe several months to actually issue an official statement about the asbestos reporting requirements for residential landlords, and now even that document is not exactly crystal clear.

In amongst all of this mayhem you and I still have to graft a living, pay the grocery bill, house our tenants and do our best to comply with all of the changes and challenges that are thrust upon us. My major renovation on the property vacated many months ago by The Mad Tenant is still proceeding, but only slowly. Other, more minor, work on other properties has taken precedence, largely on the basis that a week’s work on them can get that property re-let and restore the cash flow, while this one still has some way to go.

So far the new roof has withstood Auckland’s unseasonal storms. The inside has seen a new bathroom which now includes the laundry, the conversion of the old laundry into an office, a new fitted out kitchen utilizing second-hand cabinets off TradeMe, a full repaint of all walls, doors and ceilings, new light fittings, installation of Unovent, and new carpet and vinyl throughout. The rear deck has had the old and quite rotten overhead pergola removed and all the fascia and guttering in that area renewed. Still to go is the completion of some kitchen cabinet work, replacement of damaged window fittings and installation of security catches, and then replacement curtains.

A lot of the effort has been the slog of the removal of grime, mould, weeds, dirt and general filth around the outside of the property. It is really hard to remember just how bad the place was when we started When the going looks glacial it’s quite a shock to look at the ‘before’ photos and compare them with now.

Of course a lot of the delay relates to the difficulty of getting any tradies to actually turn up and quote. Even those that do and who then get the nod are quite fond of just popping in for just an hour or two of actual work before disappearing off for a few days to places unknown and uncontactable before returning for another brief spell of hard graft. It’s all very well to think you can get others to get their hands dirty while you, the landlord, sits back and rake in the profits but the grim reality is that if you want some part of the work to proceed regularly each and every day there is only one person who is going to do that – you.

It has become a fascinating exercise to watch Mr Twyford and his Kiwibuild plans inexorably become stranded on the craggy rocks of reality. It is all very well to draw up grandiose plans to change the world, but these paper exercises also run into the problems I am experiencing on a much smaller scale. Sure, you may have the money to do the work and build the dream, but money is simply a facilitator and in itself does not create anything. If you are stuck on a desert island with no water and no food, a massive pile of hundred dollar bills and a Gold Mastercard will not actually help you very much. The resources must actually exist before you can buy them.

Faced with the stark reality of the shortages of land, labour and materials we now see Twford annexing existing developments, bailing out stalled housing schemes and their sometimes bankrupt promoters, and slapping Kiwibuild stickers on to other peoples new housing. If what you want at the start of the pipeline is unavailable, the mantra now seems to be, then launch a takeover bid for the product that is already coming out of the other end of the pipe. So if you are yourself building your dream home, you might call in one day to find ‘Kiwibuild’ emblazoned on your nice new front door.

The other inevitable result of his demands on the exiting limited resources is the rising price at both the input end and the final product. The Labour Party has never been able to understand the marketplace, forever laboring under the delusion that somehow there exists a ‘fair’ price. There is the mantra that no matter how you dick around with the economy by raising the cost of wages, throttling access to finance, controlling the supply resources and materials and creating bureaucratic obstacles to actually getting things done, any consequential price increases are somehow unfair and should be condemned. These are, after all, the people who embrace the chimera of ‘free’.

We frequently hear that ‘The Government will build this’, ‘The Government will create that’. Rubbish. They don’t even own a hammer. What they really mean is that they will pay – with taxpayer money – some private enterprise contractor to build this or create that. The prospect of Uncle Phil in hi-viz and hard hat out slaving away on the building site in the mud and the rain is just too much to bear

[artemis]

.....from the passing of the Healthy Homes so-called Guarantee bill to the death without a whimper of the Wellington Council housing warrant of fitness requirements ..... l

I suspect there is a connection between those two. The RWOF folk at the University of Otago in Wellington will be lobbying hard to get as much of their checklist as poss included in the new minimum standards. And keeping heads down in the meantime.

Meanwhile it's almost a year since the Wellington RWOF was launched. New WOFs issued doubled this year. From 1 to 2.

The 2014 RWOF pilot reported that many of the places that failed - that would be 94% that failed - would cost hardly anything to remediate. Yeah right.

[cube]

Re tradies - called one plumber for quote and the response was 'we don't do quotes', the unstated addendum being 'do you want it fixed or not?'

Basically, "we'll do the job and charge what the hell we like."

[artemis]

Re tradies - called one plumber for quote and the response was 'we don't do quotes', the unstated addendum being 'do you want it fixed or not?'

Basically, "we'll do the job and charge what the hell we like."

Or basically - we are already busy as with work booked in. Why would we spend time visiting site, discussing job, quoting, waiting if it looks like a race to the bottom price.

Better approach is to find a good honest plumber, build a relationship, pay quickly. A box of beer after a well done job works wonders. For years!

[donna]

Yeah and it doesn't get any easier for the big jobs too while they're in demand. Builders, tradies hold all the power and they know it so either you work with them on their terms or you don't.

I've decided to go 'old school' and work hard on developing a good relationship with a builder. I've done the research and references and I know he's nowhere near the cheapest probably slightly above average but his work is good and I've nothing to gain by attempting a tendering process for the business. My line of thought is if you've got a good plumber, builder etc why would you hunt around and risk shoddy workmanship that ends up costing more later on.

cheers,

Donna