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NELSON PROPERTY INVESTORS ASSOCIATION
NOVEMBER 2013 NEWSLETTER
PO Box 198 Nelson
Our seventh and last meeting of the year is being held at the Nelson Suburban Club, Tahunanui Drive on Tuesday 26 November. 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 Andrew King speaking. Andrew is the National President of the NZ Property Investors Federation. Andrew is the first port of call for the media to seek an opinion when things get hot in the politics of housing and property. Andrew is asuccessful investor, full of positive enthusiasm and good communicator. In case you had not noticed the politicians seem to have upped the anti against landlords again. Find out what our national organisation is doing to put our point of view across. If you are coming to the meal please email Glenn at the above email address. The Suburban Club reserves seats on the basis of my bookings. No booking might mean you have to sit alone.
THE MARKET.
At last winter is departing. Looking at Trade Me advertisements indicates that over the month the advertisements in Tasman have dropped again to an unbelievable 51 whilst Nelson City has gone up by the same amount to 173. This places Tasman at the top of the low vacancy rates, followed by Taranaki, then Canterbury. Of course once the promised final census figures get published next month I might need to revise those figures. Looking at the rent levels Tasman is still leading Canterbury. The vacancy rate in Auckland has advanced by 400 over the month which clearly is the reason for their rents being dead in the water. I have noticed a few Auckland investors sniffing around our market. Despite the best effort of the real estate industry rental properties are not moving much in price. This has made the returns on lower grade properties look way better than Auckland’s. The LVR changes are hurting first home buyers. First home buyers in the provinces are just considered as collateral damage by those in power. One can only ponder what that will do for traditional voters next October / November when the tri-annual silly season returns to fill our news.With an increasing number of renters trapped in the market and sales prices not moving I scratch my head when investors want to exit the market. Hold on there I think I see fair weather and good times ahead.
POLITICS OF HOUSING
There are several things happening on a broad front by Nick Smith. I do wonder if there is some sort of master plan or if he is responding to the many voices screaming for his attention. At times I despair and think he has been taken hostage by the rabble. Clearly the pro tenant group has better resources and a louder voice than the first home buyers (working man in the street). Even our industry consisting primarily of residential properties with a $9 billion stake is only represented by unpaid volunteers. The pro public sector housing lobby groups amounting to less than 20% of the market has Government funded lobbyists to push their cause?On Nick Smith’s watch we are seeing billions poured into public housing and generous subsidies and special consideration to self-appointed operators of“social housing”. He is pushing through a special set of legislation that will give their tenants four times the rent subsidy that our private sector tenants can get. Unfortunately it is likely that the privately operated social housing groups will suddenly find their properties will begin to be treated like HNZ properties are. There is a clear consistent linkage between below market rent and poor treatment of houses.Yet we the providers of the full range of housing to the vast bulk of society are threatened with a variety of penalties and economic sabotage. Before they introduce the new regulations to try and put us out of business with things like BWOF’s and extra taxes Nick is scurrying around to provide HNZ homes withsome of the basic features that most private landlords are already supply as a matter of course. Things like drapes, good fencing for tenants with young families, smoke alarms, and protection from troublesome neighbouring tenants. I wonder when they will provide garages, landscaping trees and burglar alarms.Yet despite my pessimistic comments this week I was encouraged by one of Nick’s responses to a fully funded sociologist who got stuck into him again. I have been lamenting that he does not seem to be listening to us. Well he responded with a comment from my last newsletter re the Income Related Subsidy that HNZ currently gets and which will soon be extended to anyone who sets themselves up as a social housing provider. So perhaps there is hope that someone is listening. The problem is at the moment they are just ignoring us.
I wonder which is worse.
To not be listened to, or to be ignored after being listened to.
NEW ZEALAND LANDLORDS ARE NOT THE ONLY ONES BEING HAMMERED
I have attached an article from USA concerning one community’s final solution to problem citizens. Someone there has figured that most of the problem people are tenants. So they have come up with a cunning plan. They have moved to stop people letting their properties in certain areas. Those tenant free areas can be initiated by owners. I wonder what they will do when the children of an owner occupier commits a crime. Perhaps they will force the owner to sell. Of course nothing like that would happen in New Zealand. Well it couldn’t could it? If not then why are there already different national and local taxes for rentals versus owner occupied dwellings? Why is the Government proposing to have a lower standard of building facilities for owner occupied dwellings than rentals? Once Nick’s new left wing red tape is in place how long will it be before you cannot get permission to let your own property to say your childrenor your friends or whoever? From time to time I get complaints to me as property manager about my tenants. Sometimes that relates to noise but often it relates to how tenants treat their partners and children, vehicle infringements, and even complaints about work ethics. A few weeks ago the police rang to say a man had called in to the station to say he was going to chop down a fence. The police said because it was a rental they could not record his name, nor address of the crime. The comment was because the fence was part of a rental the crime was considered a civil matter that the police had no interest in. What’s more, the lady in blue thought that I would instantly know which of the hundreds of properties I manage the threat related to. That’s right folks stupidity and bigotry is not restricted to Homer Simpson and Harvard. New Zealand and Nelson has its own red necked idiots who hate rentals and the landlords that go with them.
Harvard May Limit Rentals
New zoning option considered as response to crimeconcerns
By Shawn Shinneman, NWHerald.com
HARVARD - Concerns from locals about recent crime in Harvard--including a string of shootings earlier this year--has the city developing a plan to limit rental properties.
A new zoning option would allow members of a neighborhood to petition to change the neighborhood's zoning in order to regulate rentals. Property owners within neighborhoods granted the distinction--technically termed a Neighborhood Conservation Overlay District or NCOD--wouldn't be allowed to change their existing single-family houses or duplexes into rentals.
A petition for a change to an NCOD would need at least two-thirds of property owners within the district, which must contain at least 50 dwellings, according to the ordinance as it's currently drafted.
But those points are still subject to change, and the city hasn't worked out exactly how it will regulate existing rentals, City Administrator Dave Nelson said. A public hearing in front of the Planning and Zoning Commission has been preliminarily scheduled for Dec. 3rd.
Harvard would become the first municipality in Illinois to adopt the Neighborhood Conservation Overlay District distinction, said Nelson. The city is considering NCOD because several people voiced their concerns about the type of people brought to the community by rental units, Nelson stated. "The normal concerns about rentals,"Nelson said.
Mayor Jay Nolan said several people contacted him earlier this year after a rash of gang-related shootings. In the spring, the city logged three shootings within a month. In July, the teenage parents of a 1-year old died in a murder-suicide. "We had some shootings in town, and some of the neighbors asked what they could do about it," Mayor Nolan stated. "This will give them the tools if they so desire to move forward with it."
The Neighborhood Conservation Overlay District plan isn't the only way the city plans to address the issue, City Administrator Dave Nelson said. Officials are drawing up a "chronic nuisance" ordinance that would allow police to fine landlords of properties that repeatedly require police attention. "It's a two-prong thing to address some of these concerns in the mayor's office," Nelsonsaid.
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