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Our third meeting of the year is being held at the Nelson Suburban Club, Tahunanui Drive on Tuesday 21 May. The meeting proper commences at 7.30 pm with the ever popular meal at 6pm when you will have the opportunity to chat to other investors. This month we have Brian Kerr. Brian used to be the tenancy mediator in Blenheim. These days he is an active investor,property manager, author, President of the Marlborough PIA and is on the NZPIFexecutive. This is what one happy investor says about him. “Brian Kerr is a man full of sensible ideas. His practical knowledge and insight is a product of his years of experience both in being a landlord and working with landlords and tenants to get good outcomes. As an experienced investor and property manager myself, I thought there was little I didn’t know already, but an hour from Brian revealed dozens of ideas I too could incorporate in my own practice. I’ve found myself saying ‘Brian says…’ again and again, and I’m reaching for his book so I can get it just right. Brian says you should ask yourself ‘is this tenant good business?. So bring your cheque book to buy a copy of the Complete Guide to Landlording in New Zealand. http://www.completelandlord.co.nz/Before Brian speaks we will hold our 2013 AGM.
In case you had not heard Dr Nick Smith MP has been appointed as the Minister of Housing. As we all know Nick is no slug. Howeversome of his recent pronouncements have me worried. The industry is already suffering from the Governments active discouragement of rental housing investment. Several of my clients have already had to sell down to reduce debt because the changes in tax related mostly to depreciation. One of my owners last month sustained a $50,000 capital loss because he was losing $5000 a year on his one expensive rental investment and could not afford to fund this from his day job.Now recently reported comments from Nick are that he is looking at Building Warrant of fitness’sf or all rental properties. He said that we need to realise that it will happen in some form because $700 million worth of the budget goes into income related rents. My guess is the government will cleverly exempt properties the public own, some of which are in a bad shape. Don’t believe me. Go look at the Transit NZ houses and some of the properties owned by Government agencies around the country. The Nelson City Council pensioner flats in Orchard Street would not have passed any sort of test before their recent upgrade. A number of residential properties already have BWOF’s some of which I manage. Typically one should expect to spend around $500 to $1000 per year on a BWOF. Nick is reported to have said that private rentals are in a bad state of repair. None of the eleven properties with BWOF’s that I am associated with get surveyed to check on the tenants comfort. The checks are all for fire, health and safety issues. BWOF’s have nothing to do with the things that relate to poor unhealthy housing. I often see tenants living in unhealthy squalor. The vast bulk of this relates to the tenants themselves. Things like disposable nappies left lying in a house, cats, dogs, and bird’s toilet practices, poor diet and failure to dress children with warm clothes will never be solved with a BWOF. The Nelson City Council is getting on the band wagon. Richard Popenhagen who currently holds the title of Eco Building Design Adviser with the Nelson city council is speaking at an Ecofest meetingon a minimum performance grade for tenanted properties. This is being held at Victory Community Centre 10th May 7 pm-8pm. They have issued an invitation tolandlords to attend.Then Nick is pushing to pour more money into Third Sector social housing. I do wonder if there is any sort of check to survey rental availability before approving each new project. For instance there is currently a serious over supply of rentals in the Nelson Central city but the Government keeps pouring more money into this sector. Then recently he was reported to be considering paying social agencies a huge subsidy like HNZ gets in order to permit the providers to provide income related rents. What is wrong with his hearing? Landlords have been pleading for years to get WINZ to pay accommodation subsidies direct to us to ensure the money is not diverted to drugs, alcohol or what ever. No one wants to listen to us so millions $ of public money are wasted while poor little children go cold and hungry. When the money given to tenants intended for housing does not reach the landlords the tenants get put out onto the street and the innocent suffer.When socialist housing or any other consumer product is provided by a government they always have two sizes these being too big and too small. Nick says this is one of the problems HNZ has with most of their stock being in the three bedroom category.This is not a problem restricted to New Zealand. Socialism is a world wide curse. Is this a sign that the National led Government of New Zealand has abandoned private enterprise? What on earth are they doing selling some national assets but investing in more public sector housing. Is Nick about to change his name to Helen?
Being a dedicated “do it your selfer” I like to collect my own tenancy debts. Once you have your debt defined by the tenancy tribunal you are permitted to enforce this debt. The process via the courts is called “Order for Examination”. Generally this is done after the tenant has departed. The landlord must supply an address where the debtor can have the warrant to attend the court personally served by the court bailiff. The most successful time to achieve this is during an eviction. So it is always best to have tenants evicted by the bailiff rather than by landlord declaration/ notice. Place of employment is another commonly overlooked location. The OE must be attended by either the landlord / property manager named on the judgement or a lawyer. Using your company name on the judgement means you havea choice of people to attend. Once you get to court be quiet and take careful notes of what the tenant says. It is not uncommon for the debtor to claim they spend something like $100 more per week than they earn. Surprise, no wonder they did not pay the rent. They then use this as an excuse to not offer to pay anything towards your debt. At my most recent case the debtor swore under oath they were paying a creditor $50 per week. When I was asked to speak by the court staff I suggested halving the payment to that creditor and paying the other half to me. That way I said the debtor was no worse off. The court staff thought that was a wise sensible suggestion. The debtor could not object and say they had just being lying under oath. The employer then gets directed topay the debt to you before the debtor can spend the money. Problem solved. At least two of the three people in the room left smiling.
WARNING STORM CLOUDS AREAPPEARING ON THE HORIZON: ROUGH WEATHER IS PREDICTED
COLLECTING YOUR DEBTS USING THE COURT
Being a dedicated “do it your selfer” I like to collect my own tenancy debts. Once you have your debt defined by the tenancy tribunal you are permitted to enforce this debt. The process via the courts is called “Order for Examination”. Generally this is done after the tenant has departed. The landlord must supply an address where the debtor can have the warrant to attend the court personally served by the court bailiff. The most successful time to achieve this is during an eviction. So it is always best to have tenants evicted by the bailiff rather than by landlord declaration/ notice. Place of employment is another commonly overlooked location. The OE must be attended by either the landlord / property manager named on the judgement or a lawyer. Using your company name on the judgement means you havea choice of people to attend. Once you get to court be quiet and take careful notes of what the tenant says. It is not uncommon for the debtor to claim they spend something like $100 more per week than they earn. Surprise, no wonder they did not pay the rent. They then use this as an excuse to not offer to pay anything towards your debt. At my most recent case the debtor swore under oath they were paying a creditor $50 per week. When I was asked to speak by the court staff I suggested halving the payment to that creditor and paying the other half to me. That way I said the debtor was no worse off. The court staff thought that was a wise sensible suggestion. The debtor could not object and say they had just being lying under oath. The employer then gets directed topay the debt to you before the debtor can spend the money. Problem solved. At least two of the three people in the room left smiling.
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