Posts by nzlemming
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Katharine Moody,
What could the parties in opposition do – right now – to find the numbers?
They can’t. It’s really that simple. The mechanisms are not in place.
[edit] and if you can't find the real information, that should be the point of your release, not to say some "leaked information" shows something to be the case when it's a partial subset of one vendor's customer set. For every leak, someone had a motive for leaking it. If you don't know what the motive was, you don't run with it unless you can confirm it from a secondary source. Journalism and Politics 101. Both the Herald and Labour have forgotten this.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to BenWilson,
That’s the bit that’s scary about this. If your official policy is to refuse decent information, then you do rather leave yourself vulnerable to decent misinformation
National don't care. If you haven't learned this fact thus far, we must not be reading the same media.
THEY DON'T CARE:
- about facts
- about evidence-based decision making
- about reasoned analysis or criticism
- about transparency
- about actually having a meaningful discussion about anything.They prefer other people spouting misinformation because then they can be all-wise and say "if you knew what we know, you'd understand why you're wrong" without any intention of ever sharing the information. They're happy to have people spouting misinformation because then they can call them on it without having to reveal anything, most of all, that they don't have the information themselves.
Disabuse yourself of any belief that the Key government (besides whom the Bolger government is like unto a pane of glass) has any intention of revealing anything if it can make their opponents wriggle on a hook of their own making.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to BenWilson,
It’s irresponsible of National to make it impossible to even have a debate about this based on more sensible facts.
I literally choked on my tea when I read this. This is the National Government you're talking about.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to BenWilson,
Any other ideas on how to find the numbers would be cool
You could do it, relatively easily, by using the data I suggested from various agencies and cross-referencing it to eliminate residents. That would require changes to legislation and I would be very circumspect about letting National change the privacy aspects of the Revenue Act or the Privacy Act - be careful what you wish for.
Or, you could require property purchasers to declare residency status, set up an information trail via LINZ to the Overseas Investment Office who would compile a register of non-resident purchasers (might need some tweaking of the Overseas Investment Act and Regulations) which would be a metric shit-load simpler.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to BenWilson,
Well, my point is that when you want to make it clear that good analysis is virtually impossible, maybe doing the best you can and everyone seeing just how weak it really is isn’t a bad way of showing that better data should be kept.
When you want to make such a thing clear, then that is what you say. You don't say "our analysis shows that Chinese buyers are buying out of proportion to their population, therefore they are non-resident and thus the problem" - that is so what you don't do if you have any moral integrity and respect for facts, as well as for the people you are targeting. That is, however, what Labour chose not to do. I doubt they could have managed it worse if they'd got Farrar and Slater to write the release.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Katharine Moody,
But to do nothing in the face of the Government’s refusal to collect proper data .. is that what you see as a more appropriate response to the Auckland affordability crisis?
Absolutely not. But what they have done is made it more unlikely that the Government will collect proper data, because now they can yell "race card" instead. Really looking forward to the next Question Time and the supercilious responses from Ministers #not
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to BenWilson,
There’s lots and lots of contributing factors
I did say "partially" ...
It's just as plausible that the problem is too many people watching Homes Under The Hammer on the Living Channel and deciding to build a property portfolio for their retirement. I don't say that's the cause, but it's equally plausible. The point is we don't know and, minus that information, it was completely irresponsibly of Labour to pump out a message that a) takes external investment as a prime cause, without being able to prove it and (more reprehensibly) b) sheets that "cause" home on a particular nationality.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to BenWilson,
I don’t think such a thing really is provable under current conditions. It’s definitely not possible to model it when the data isn’t even kept. How would you go about establishing the truth of that?
Pretty much my point. Which is why Labour shouldn't have gone ahead in the manner they have. As Stephen said, they chose to release this "analysis" - no-one forced them to.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Stephen Judd,
As a member of another sinister minority
You so sinista, mista!
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Jim Cathcart,
If you make the assumption that property prices are being driven by non-resident foreigners,
That's the trick, though, that Rob and Twyford never actually prove.
They're basing their analysis on names, which have little bearing on residency. If a Chinese person emigrates from the PRC to NZ, their passport will reflect PRC spelling and usage. That will be the first document NZ authorities see, along with their application to immigrate which must match their passport to confirm their identity. Unless they change it by deed poll, this is the legal name they will use in NZ and the name they will purchase property under. Rob's analysis in no way identifies which purchasers are non-resident. As has been reiterated here and elsewhere, it can't because that information hasn't been collected as such, and piecing it together from primary sources at NZIS, IRD, DIA, LINZ and local councils (to verify how many purchases were made by residents) would probably be in breach of at least the Privacy Act and the Revenue Act, and possibly several others I haven't thought of.
IF property price inflation is caused by non-resident purchasers for investment, by all means, let's have that as the story and the discussion. That's not, however, what Labour did. They singled out a single nationality without a statistical leg to stand on, for all the bleating of Bayesian analysis as if it's some sort of touchstone. I, too, have some experience with statistics and, if your base assumptions are not defined rigorously, your results are not meaningful. I challenge Rob Salmond and Labour to prove that Auckland's housing bubble is caused by non-resident investment. They can't. They know they can't. The information is not currently available. Instead of fomenting a discussion about the Government's refusal to collect data to do that analysis, they decided that any headline is a good headline.
As others have noted, Auckland's problem (as well as the rest of the country, perhaps) appears to be partially that of rentiers owning too much of the property and thus preventing would-be home owners from getting into the market. There are thousands of properties vacant in Auckland at the moment, because it's more profitable to the owners to keep them that way as a land bank. Those are the discussions we should be having. Labour screwed this pooch by making it about surnames.