Posts by Alfie
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to ,
As an aside, I haven’t had a lot of luck with Chinese equipment. But my frend has an old school Chinese, which is easily as reliable as a Russian one from the same period.
Car? Manservant?
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to talkie_toaster,
If your response to new people trying to have an opinion is to accuse them of being whale oil trolls that's sad. I vote green and have never posted on any of those blogs.
Hi Talkie... just a quick post to let you know that there are some people here who agree with your thoughts. To me the real issue is blindingly obvious but others seem intent on joining Nick Smith in playing the race card.
Sure... if the Labour party was inciting riots and suggesting we attack asians in the street, that would certainly be a race issue. And while some may feel it's unfair to single out Chinese buyers, it's hard to ignore the fact that one particular ethnic group is currently buying huge amounts of property all over the world. To ignore that fact misses the point completely.
Maybe we should take a step back and actually discuss the real issue. There is a housing crisis in Auckland and our government is doing it's upmost to ignore the fact.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Swan,
If Labour are correct in their analysis, then this shows two things. One we are recieving foreign direct investment in an area where we have a shortage of investment - housing. That's pretty much an entirely good news story.
Wow! Foreign investors driving up the price of housing in Auckland is now a good thing? That sort of logic makes me grateful that I live down south.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Lilith __,
The government has started collecting the data, and now require a NZ IRD number for people buying property.
True. But I wonder how many resident Chinese students will effectively "own" NZ property while having little or no visible income. The requirement to have an IRD number is just National's way of appearing to do something about the problem whilst sitting on their hands.
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OnPoint: My last name sounds Chinese, in reply to Scott A,
I'll say it again... this is not a race issue.
If Russians were buying almost 40% of Auckland's property, Labour would surely have called it that way. The fact is that Labour has worked with the only stats available, thanks to the Nats continuing refusal to compile meaningful purchase info. Rob Salmond's explanation of the methods used to interpretet the data seems reasonable and points clearly to Chinese buyers distorting the Auckland housing market.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Mark Graham,
__Stats from BNZ__ indicate numbers of overseas buyers relatively small and Chinese overseas buyers only portion of that.
What makes you think the BNZ stats show the full picture?
When the Chinese government is supporting overseas land purchases by making loans easy to get, it's unlikely that the BNZ would get a look in. Why take out an expensive mortgage from an Aussie bank when money from home is cheaper and much easier to obtain.
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OnPoint: My last name sounds Chinese, in reply to TracyMac,
What a shame, then, that Twyford doesn't give you any information about either.
Information he'd gather from where, exactly?
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OnPoint: My last name sounds Chinese, in reply to Tom Semmens,
So I wouldn’t get hung up on this “racist dogwhistle”. I think the only people getting outraged about it are some of the PA crew, who seem to love getting offended about stuff like this.
I agree wholeheartedly Tom. I almost walked away from this post in the expectation that I'd be attacked for being xenophobic. As Seriatim said above:
On the contrary, what the headline is screaming to me is "Foreign non-resident buyers are a major cause of our housing issues, and both a foreign buyers register and legislation to address this is urgently needed.
It doesn't matter a damn whether it's cashed-up Chinese buyers or Russian oligarchs. Offshore buyers are seriously distorting New Zealand's property market, attracted by potentially huge and untaxed capital gains.
The reason China is mentioned so often is that they're the predominent foreign buyer worldwide. Andrew Taylor, co-founder of juwai.com - the Chinese property website says...
Chinese buyers don't want your house, they want the land"
Chinese investors spent $38 billion to $50 billion buying houses overseas last year. That pushes up prices and cuts out local buyers. For that reason there are growing restrictions all over the world on foreigners buying land, particularly large blocks of productive land.
I support foreign investment which helps our country to grow - but selling off the family silver is short-term thinking. As NZ continues it's dive towards third world status, maybe we can take a leaf out of the Cook Islands' book. Foreigners cannot buy any land in Rarotonga. You can lease land for up to 99 years, but it will always remain in Cook Islands' hands. I like that approach and believe NZ needs to head in that direction. Australia's new builds only restriction for offshore buyers is also effective.
If there's one thing that's plain from Labour raising this issue, it's the obvious need for a register of foreign buyers. How can you hold a reasonable discussion on this subject when the government point blank refuses to gather the necessary stats.
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to izogi,
There's a telling quote in the Herald profile of Pebbles Izogi linked to above.
I could be a feminist, hippie, left-wing, John-Key-hating, never-washing person that lives off the Government and as much as that would make my Dad unhappy, he wouldn't care as long as I was good to people and trustworthy.
And the Herald hired her? FFS!
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
They hadn't heard of Mexicans back then. :)
And Donald Trump hadn't even been invented. ;-)