Life as a Landlord

[Davo36]

Sheesh check out this article on Stuff:http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/mone...lls-of-renting

A couple of quotes:

If you're struggling to deal with rising rent, at least make sure your money-grubbing landlord is playing by the rules.

If you take sensible precautions and don't let your landlord walk all over you, hopefully you can avoid the blacklist and live happily in rental harmony.

So just another article perpetuating the idea that landlords are all bad and tenants are all saints.

[PC]

Removal of depreciation & ring fencing of losses has been a huge tax increase on rents.
Just passing on the extra tax to the tenants.
(Didn't hear any moaning from them when the laws changed).

But don't worry - capital gains tax will fix it...

[Perry]

Sheesh check out this article on Stuff. So just another article perpetuating
the idea that landlords are all bad and tenants are all saints.

Frightfully sexist, too. Wasn't the last NZPIF LL of the Year a landlady?

[Toasty]

Sheesh check out this article on Stuff:http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/mone...lls-of-renting

A couple of quotes:




So just another article perpetuating the idea that landlords are all bad and tenants are all saints.

This article actually made me check out the tenancy support website they linked to. It reads like a hate speech against the everyone who is a landlord. Most self serving drivel I have read in a while. If there was a Landlord Support website with the same content we would all be burned at the stake.

[Keys]

An interesting read. What country did they get their interpretation of the RTA from?

[Toasty]

An interesting read. What country did they get their interpretation of the RTA from?

Somalia Tenancy Support Agency

[flyernzl]

One of the quirks of modern life is the way the meaning of words are subtly changed.

Recently I listened to a social worker who asserts that children’s visits to the Doctor should be free. This puzzles me. How does he intend to persuade medical practitioners and their nurses into working without pay? Will the suppliers of medical consumables donate their products at no charge? During the interview, no-one seemed to have the whit to ask him about that. Similarly, those who propound the virtues of free public transport seem to ignore the probability of bus drivers and their families starving to death and the suppliers of fuel, tyres and mechanical parts going bankrupt.

Of course, these social experts don’t really mean ‘free’. What they really mean by ‘free’ is ‘100% subsidized by the ratepayer and the taxpayer’. Thus they have redefined the meaning of ‘free’. What they promote may well make sense and possibly even be socially desirable, but they should argue the case on its merits and not attempt to confuse the issue by calling it ‘free’.

Similarly, we now seem to be embroiled in a wide-ranging public discussion on the merits of ‘affordable housing’. This puzzles me (not a difficult task, I admit). What, exactly, is ‘affordable housing’ and, even more importantly, what then is ‘unaffordable housing’?

I can just imagine some small-scale builder coming home at the end of the day and excitedly say to his wife “Hey Martha, I’ve got this great idea. For my next job I’m going to build an unaffordable house”. This is nonsense of course. Any house that is built is affordable to someone, even if that person is Kim Dotcom. So what they really mean is ‘affordable to those of limited financial resources’.

The average price of a house in the Auckland area is quoted as around $584,000, and this is considered to be too high for first home buyers. Of course it is. Look at the number of well-publicized property sales in the multi-million category. There are whole suburbs of Auckland where even a one-bedroom borer-infested shack comes with a million-dollar plus price tag. Logically then, there must be many many houses sold at prices well below the 584K mark in order to create that average. I know that there are modestly priced houses in Auckland City. I have personally bought two of them on the open market within the last year. Sure, these houses are not in the Grammar School zone but they are well-built stand-alone houses with lawns, clean, tidy, don’t leak, bus stop a few yards away and with a primary school at the end of the street. If need arises I would not be ashamed to live in one of them.

My first ever car was a 1934 Austin Seven cabriolet. That means that it had a fabric roof. It was also the world’s first automatic convertible. Whenever your speed plus the head-on component of any wind blowing exceeded 42 miles per hour, the roof blew off. Automatically. I carried a claw hammer and some flathead nails to bang it back on again. One day the engine fell out, so I replaced it with a Ford Defect. This was fitted with suction-driven windscreen wipers. Driving over the Kaimais in the rain these allowed you see the road ahead but not move or drive up the road quite unable to see where you were going until you met either a fence or a Mack truck. Every trip an adventure. Being a tall and skinny car, it always leaned over dangerously on corners. One day it leaned a bit too far and ended its life wheels in the air with one hell of a crashing sound.

The point is, I did not mutter and moan about a new car being too expensive and that ‘something should be done’. Everyone I knew started with an old banger of a car and worked their way up. Five years later with a bit of strenuous saving I was able to buy my first new car. 50% cash deposit and pay off the balance in 12 months as was legally required at that time.

So we all start somewhere. Old bangers today, a Lexus tomorrow. With housing, forget inner city close to the CBD. Forget good school zone and a sea view. Start in Swanson, Manurewa, or even Huntly if you need to. When you are young there is even fun in doing it hard provided you approach it in the right frame of mind.

Rents are also back in the news. A mixed bag, of course. Right now we have media reports that rents have soared in inner Auckland and stalled in the suburbs. Just what you would expect in January. I expect that the journos are dusting off last year’s February and March doom-and-gloom panic pieces on rental shortages ready to recycle them into this year. As we are winding up into local authority elections late this year and national elections in 2014, I would expect the ‘something must be done’ brigade to be out in force once they have returned from their holiday sojourns in Tahiti and Hawaii.

So, what can we expect in 2013?
Talk of a CGT, Land tax, bank restrictions on 100% mortgages, transfer taxes. All of these options appeal as quick fixes to long-term problems. I do not think any of these nostrums will solve the problems currently evident in the housing market. Maybe the problems will disappear if we do nothing but let the market run. Maybe we will end up with a substantial market crash after all. I do not pretend to know the answers, or possibly even know how to frame the right questions.

I ask each of you to think about the property industry, where it is heading, and what we can do to ensure that most people have reasonable access to secure housing at an affordable price. Encourage young people to get on the property ladder, no matter how difficult it may seem to them at this time. Harass your politicians (both local and national) to cut through the red tape and sacred cows that delay developments and make our lives stressful for no good reason. Go to it.

[Perry]

Unaffordable housing is like many of the all-too-common sales slogans: a hung comparative.

I remember my first mechanised transport as a married man: it was a Norton dominator.
If we wanted to go out as a family, I went and borrowed my grandma's Morris Minor. Our
first state flat had no hot water cupboard and I had to lay the lawns. We had a mattress
on the floor and some old sheets pinned across the windows. No TV, no telephone and
few other of life's discretionary pleasures. It was a bit of a hand-me-down life, back then.

What's especially galling - from those of the social engineering genre - is the observation:
"You're so lucky you've got . . . . "

Once, I used to have to suppress a desire to punch people who said that. That was back
when weekends were engaged with working, rather than spent on sand, surf and slurping.

Another thought-provoking piece, flyernzl. Pity that those who most need to read it, never
will. Blessed are the practical, for they shall bring substance to the visions of the dreamers.

[eri]

what we need

is a war on laziness

and greed

[Dragon Master]

what we need

is a war on laziness

and greed

I'd join if I didn't need to get off the couch or spend any of my "hard earned" cash. If I can do that I'm defiantly in =D

[Perry]

What's Affordable: What's Living?

Well, flyernzl, here's another of the same stripe that you might proffer
some comment on. That prices will go up as wages go up and it will be
back to square one seems to be left out of the analysis.

Calls For Living Wage After Report
Thu, 14 Feb 2013 5:44a.m.

Social policy researchers say New Zealanders need to earn at least
$18.40 an hour to live with dignity and participate in their
community. The Living Wage report, put together by Family Centre
Social Policy Research, says the figure was based on a household
having 1.5 incomes, producing a total income of $57,432. The figure,
well above the minimum wage of $13.50, would require current tax rates
and entitlements to remain to be relevant, and they estimated
Aucklanders would need an extra $5.70 an hour via the accommodation
supplement to deal with higher rental costs.

The report calculated what income was needed to allow a family of four
to have basic housing, food, clothing and education, be able to afford
a school trip for their children, have a computer in the home and to
mix with friends recreationally on a modest level. "The estimates
should not be regarded as extravagant in the greater scheme of things
but rather as representing the valid aspirations of low and middle
income New Zealand," the report says. The figure was put together
after interviewing several focus groups in Auckland and Wellington.

[NovInvestor]

to the topic of being a landlord.

Last night, a call with 07 at the front arrived at my mobile.

I took it, and it sounds like a Pakiha kiwi lady probably in her 40s called to inquire about my property for rent.

She asked about the backyard and rent and etc, normal questions...

Then she asked:

"are you a foreign landlord?"

I was a bit puzzled and replied:

"No, I'm in Auckland"

She finally asked:

"Are you Chinese?"

I thought this lady is good at identifying accents , and replied:

"Yes I'm Chinese."

She replied:

"ok, thank you."

and hung up.


What can I say?

[eri]

what you can say is

"why do you ask?"

[Maccachic]

Shocking!

I was thinking about increase in wages = incease in price but money = more money going round and what affect does this have?

Also is the $18 for two working parents in that family of four or one?

[NovInvestor]

what you can say is

"why do you ask?"

She hung up, and I was too slow to react...

17 years in NZ and this is the first time I encountered this scenario you know lol...