Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: Political Idol, or whatever…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Come on, stun me with some actual principles you can be held accountable for!
If I didn't know which way you'd party-voted in 2011, I could say something really snarky right now.
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Hard News: Political Idol, or whatever…, in reply to Russell Brown,
There may be a conversation for the Greens to have in that.
Particularly since the thought of Norman as Minister of Finance will encourage some people to vote National just to avoid that happening.
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Hard News: So long, and thanks for all…, in reply to Chris Waugh,
I think this is the point where somebody explains the protections for tenants in many European countries.
I think a key one is a requirement for cause before terminating a tenancy. In NZ a landlord can give 90 days’ notice and that’s the end of the matter. There is no right of appeal (unless it’s breaking a fixed-term tenancy without mutual agreement), and no requirement for there to be any reason. Could have been a day ending with a ‘y’ when the landlord made the decision, and that’s more than sufficient.
ETA: This is not a recent change, either. It's been the law for many years.
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Hard News: So long, and thanks for all…, in reply to Carol Stewart,
I don’t agree that private provision of rental properties necessarily has to be a bad thing, as I hope my example showed.
No, it doesn't, but because it introduces a private profit motive (and in this country gives tenants very, very little protection against bad landlords) it's not an activity which is broadly socially beneficial. You do sound like a good landlord, and I have never personally encountered a landlord from hell, but I know people who have. My brother used to work for DBH, and some of the stories would make your hair curl.
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Hard News: Political Idol, or whatever…, in reply to HORansome,
why Russell for Deputy PM and not Meteira?
Because he's the one who's put himself out front for a senior role in a coalition, perhaps? Met hasn't been the one talking about being Minister of Finance, which is traditionally given to the DPM.
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Hard News: So long, and thanks for all…, in reply to Carol Stewart,
Getting hit with more costs would probably cause us to reconsider our philanthropic approach.
Which is unfortunate, but you’re also a distinct minority. Plus, if you’re not making an income from it you’re obviously holding it for capital gain. Which makes you a prime example of the landlord-who-doesn’t-care-about-income-because-they’ll-make-a-tax-free-pile-at-sale class. Not a personal attack, just an observation that landlords either own for the income or for the capital gain. If the gain at sale was going to be taxed, by your own admission you’d adjust what you did about income.
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Hard News: So long, and thanks for all…, in reply to Carol Stewart,
Nobody needs to own more than one house
So where do rental properties come from?
In this country? From private landlords who don't need to be in that game, mostly. Once upon a time it was considered legitimate for the state to be a landlord. In much of Europe, it still is.That this country has extended private greed into the provision of housing does not mean it is right, or the only way to do things.
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Hard News: So long, and thanks for all…, in reply to Deborah,
I think that what you’re suggesting is something along the lines of taxing income that is held by the trustees in proportion to the underlying beneficiaries rates. But that wouldn’t really work, because beneficiaries don’t actually own the trust, and usually trustees are free to give more income to some beneficiaries than others. So it’s not clear what proportion of income which has been retained in the trust, can be attributed to each beneficiary. And that means that you can’t establish overall tax rates fairly.
Nope, no proportionality whatsoever. Find the median marginal rate for all the beneficiaries (whether or not they got a distribution) for their all-sources income, then apply that rate, rounded up to the nearest bracket, to all the retained income.
Alternatively, stop worrying about retained income entirely and just tax distributions; something that would work even better if we had stamp duty or some other kind of property transaction tax. Tax the trust for non-cash distributions at the marginal rate of the beneficiary to whom the distributions are made (or is that already the case? Trust taxation made my eyes glaze over), ignore trust income that’s not distributed, and continue to tax cash distributions at the beneficiary’s marginal rate. -
Hard News: So long, and thanks for all…, in reply to Deborah,
Rentals in our two main cities (Auckland and Christchurch) have been increasing, but that seems to be due to demand.
It's also due to National abolishing all previous rental protections that applied to tenants. There's no cap to how much a landlord can increase the rent for existing tenants, beyond the need to give adequate notice and the restriction of a six-month waiting period before another increase. Throw in that tenants can be evicted without a reason in order to allow a really big increase, and the market is very much in the landlord's favour in those cities. There's zero regulatory protection for tenants.
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Hard News: So long, and thanks for all…, in reply to Gary Young,
On the other hand won’t it also put a damper on those who buy up two, three, four or more houses that they don’t really need and don’t intend to live in but regard simply as income generators?
I think the LVR policy is misguided and incorrectly targeted. It's not people who "own" their home (or, at least, own the bath and maybe the toilet) who will cause our economy to collapse if there's a correction. Rather, it's the highly-leveraged "property investors" who have half a dozen (or several dozen!) houses in a cascade of 95% mortgages. The Reserve Bank should be clamping down on second and subsequent mortgages, where people are borrowing to buy additional houses. Maybe 30% deposit requirement for a second, 50% for third and additional. That would have two effects. First, it'd slow down the compulsive landlords by making it much, much harder to borrow to buy up multiple houses. Second, it'd reduce the exposure in a failure by reducing the level of leverage.
Nobody needs to own more than one house. You can't live in multiple houses simultaneously. Making it harder to do doesn't have any impact on owner-occupiers, but addresses the serious structural distortions present in our housing-focused economy.