Hard News: Behind those Herald home-buying stories
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
All that's really happening is that the subsidies gone, so the renters get poorer and some non-socially housed rate taxpayers get richer.
There's evidence that any "subsidy" is a recent phenomenon, and that it's a symptom of the casino economy created by an overheated property market. Until recently, Christchurch City Council's social housing rents were set on the model that the enterprise was entirely self-funding. Then-Mayor Bob Parker's attempt to make a cash cow of Council housing by increasing rents by an unprecedented 25% in his first term was defeated in part by legally invoking Council's commitment to self-funded social housing.
During the Shipley era, when "market rentals" were introduced for state house tenants, many who found themselves driven to severe hardship were pleasantly surprised to discover that City Housing's self-funded rentals were significantly more affordable.
Last year Council housing was divested to a separate trust.
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Aucklanders are wage slaves forced to live in far flung suburbs many miles from where they work in crummy underpaid jobs while their bosses do cushy innercity commutes.
Still more cruelly much of the public transport infrastructure is of most benefit to people who live centrally. The further out you go, the more dispersed PT becomes.
Many thousands of us sat burning fossil fuels on the NW last night for way too long. Bah.
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Is there any analysis around of the impact of switching housing NZ's budget from building and owning new housing to providing rent subsidies to private land lords?
Could it be that government rent subsidies push up rents for everyone, and help inflate prices in the lower end of the housing market, whereas building houses would have increased supply and stabilised or reduced prices?
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Sacha, in reply to
much of the public transport infrastructure is of most benefit to people who live centrally. The further out you go, the more dispersed PT becomes.
Seen the Congestion Free Network v2? Lots more sideways connectedness.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
You ain’t kidding. Nearly 77% of the national wealth is tied up in residential property (scroll down for the pretty horizontal bar graph titled “New Zealand Asset Classes”).
And the RE industry makes up 17% of our GDP.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
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Here's a story about a 15 year old buying a house (20 years ago!)
http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/home-property/91448742/on-the-ladder-first-home-at-15-could-be-a-record -
Rich of Observationz, in reply to
I'm assuming that, rather than paying SBW through a bank payment, he gets handed a kitbag full of banknotes after each game?
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James Dunne, in reply to
He probably gets it paid into an account which doesn't bear interest or donates the interest to charity or makes charitable payments which he thinks outweigh any benefit that he might have derived from the interest or he uses some other sort of Islamic financial instrument.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
Islam's issue is charging interest, not banking itself. A point which seems to pass by many of SWB's detractors.
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Moz, in reply to
a 15 year old buying a house
I'm amazed that he could persuade the court that he should be allowed to do that. Normal children can't sign contracts until they're 18, even if they have guarantors. The common practice is for the parents to pretend that they're carrying out the transactions or to form a trust, but that article suggests neither trick was used. The risk for the child is that parents may not want to recognise their ownership once they turn 18...
I'm surprised the media aren't bringing up the equally useless idea of buying houses that are worth nearly nothing due to being in areas of negative demand. The under $25,000 end of the market has quite a few properties available.
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Lucy Telfar Barnard, in reply to
The $11.1m doesn’t come solely from removal of the subsidy. It also comes from health (hospitalisation) and justice system cost differences between home owners and tenants. It underestimates health savings because it doesn’t include GP visits or prescriptions, nor (as far as I recall) ACC claims.
However, the data the economic modelling was based on came from the Housing Foundation Waimahia development, and did not include the effective subsidy provided to the home buyers, in the form of below-market purchase prices due to what I understand was a subsidised land deal, and not-for-profit building model.
The real flaw in the analysis, though, is the underlying assumption that the advantages of home ownership are somehow attached to the tenure type itself, rather than the things that in New Zealand go with home ownership – eg security of tenure, a capital base.
A more useful comparison for BERL’s study would be between home-ownership, and giving people entirely secure tenancies (only endable by the landlord if rent not paid or property damaged – though tenants could still have the right to give notice) along with the heavy budgeting, social and community-strengthening interventions provided at Waimahia.
Yes, we should be aiming to put home-ownership in reach of those who want it. But there are a whole lot of fixes we could do for people renting as well, which we would expect to bring a fair chunk of the economic (health and justice) benefits counted by BERL, and we could make those fixes now, rather than having to wait until enough houses are built for prices to come down.
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Moz, in reply to
Islam's issue is charging interest, not banking itself. A point which seems to pass by many of SWB's detractors.
It's almost the same prohibition on usury that Christians have. Not that you'd know that from watching the Christians. There's an interesting summary of the subject here. I looked at using an Islamic bank when buying our house, but they weren't entirely sure they wanted to deal with non-Muslims. I suspect some of their security is of the form "you wouldn't want to turn up to the mosque and face us if you defaulted".
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Nasa believes Saturn's ocean-bearing moon Enceladus could support lifeforms
No word from the NZ Herald on house prices there as yet!
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Isn't this kind of story the bread and butter of the right wing narrative "if you work hard enough you can be rich"? The implied corollary is "if you are poor it is because you are lazy". Never mind structural impediments like sexism, racism, or simply not having rich mom and dad.
The Herald championing right wing narrative? No way!
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Alfie, in reply to
It's almost the same prohibition on usury that Christians have. Not that you'd know that from watching the Christians.
Didn't Jesus cast Goldman Sachs from the temple over two thousand years ago? Somebody obviously screwed up and let the buggers back in.
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Moz, in reply to
Didn't Jesus
You forget, today is Good Friday when we celebrate murdering that trouble-making son of a god. In other news, some prophet gets a weekend holiday in heaven before being sent back down "but daaaad!!" "get back down there and clean that mess up" "it's not faaaiiiiirrr! You never let me do what I want".
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Isn't this kind of story the bread and butter of the right wing narrative "if you work hard enough you can be rich"? The implied corollary is "if you are poor it is because you are lazy". Never mind structural impediments like sexism, racism, or simply not having rich mom and dad.
The Herald championing right wing narrative? No way!
It's exactly the kind of just-world fallacy that's perverted the course of democracy, particularly in America and Britain. Dismayed as we all are by them, President Trump and the Brexit vote have exposed its diminishing returns.
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Here's today's effort from the Herald. A nice young man who found that merely making his own lunches gave him enough money to buy his first rental. No smashed avocado and latté for this lad. While the story acknowledges that "...his parents had helped guarantee his loan" it adds...
...he would like to invest in one of his parent's dairy farms in the future...
One of his parents' dairy farms? (Herald subs: note the corrected apostrophe placement)
...and had plans to travel to Europe for six weeks in July.
The Herald are holding up young Scott as a shining example to the rest of us, although you'd have to ask exactly what kind of five star gourmet lunches were foresaken to generate that level of capital. He's doing a fulltime university course, has only owned the house for a couple of months and he can already afford a European holiday? Nice.
By promoting the idea that there is no housing crisis, provided you're prepared to knuckle down to some hard work, self-sacrifice and (cough cough... have rich parents), the Herald's current batch of rich-to-richer tales really are pushing the ethical boundaries of what defines party political advertisements in an election year.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
By promoting the idea that there is no housing crisis, provided you're prepared to knuckle down to some hard work, self-sacrifice and (cough cough... have rich parents), the Herald's current batch of rich-to-richer tales really are pushing the ethical boundaries of what defines party political advertisements in an election year.
My inner Machiavellian wants the CIA or the FSB to unleash a Stuxnet on the Auckland housing bubble. That is, if a modern-day Robin Hood hasn't gotten there first.
I really hope that the aforementioned text won't put me on a state watchlist.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
The Herald are holding up young Scott as a shining example to the rest of us, although you'd have to ask exactly what kind of five star gourmet lunches were foresaken to generate that level of capital.
Once these property pieces have done their online headline dash, both the Herald and Stuff tend to have them live out their residual propaganda value alongside items touting the very kind of consumption their subjects claim to have renounced.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
Here's today's effort from the Herald. A nice young man who found that merely making his own lunches gave him enough money to buy his first rental
... in Rotorua. He hasn't bought in Auckland.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
... in Rotorua. He hasn't bought in Auckland.
It illustrates the trade-off between cheap houses and gainful employment in NZ. Unless of course, you're a farmer, or a company director who can afford to heli-commute. NZ Inc is still behind the 8-ball on telecommuting.
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Tremain from today's ODT .... as relevant here as just about anywhere
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