Posts by Dismal Soyanz
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Schrodinger's God?
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Hard News: Privacy and the Public Interest, in reply to BenWilson,
True and I'd add the the actual imposition of CGT was shrugged off in Australia. I'd also just say watch out for Black swans.
And just to return to the OT (sorta), even when the evidence seems overwhelming, there are plenty of people who will still think differently.
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The RBNZ's data on lending to households says housing related lending was running at $190 billion as of March this year. The value of the housing stock was $725 billion as of March.
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Hard News: Privacy and the Public Interest, in reply to BenWilson,
I don’t even know how to find out how much of that trillion in houses is debt.
There’s a few places to look. There are surveys on household wealth and, of course, RBNZ data on residential mortgages. I’ll post some links later.
I don’t think taking a fair tax on capital gains will even make a blip. If property goes down, there won’t be any capital gains to take. It only happens if they’re going up. So I really don’t think it’s going to puncture anything.
The problem that has plagued markets since time immemorial is that it all depends on what the buyer and seller think it is worth. So it can be highly subjective. The direct effect of a CGT could be tiny but if it shifts sentiment just enough it can be self-reinforcing.
In one sense we are “lucky” in that mortgages here are personal in that they follow the borrower regardless of the value of the house. Thus homeowners with mortgages are reluctant to walk away from a negative equity house, unlike the US situation not that long ago.
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Great metaphor. Now I'm trying to figure out how to work Hershey Bar into a comment...
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Hard News: Privacy and the Public Interest, in reply to BenWilson,
Well, and there’s a lot of people who can’t see that their house won’t be subject to CGT. They think it’s something they have to pay. It’s not. So to that end I don’t think it’s likely to really make much of a dent in prices.
Not directly but given the exuberance in the housing market, it's quite possible that something that blows some of the froth from the top causes the whole soufflé to collapse.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Hilary Stace,
About time she joined with John Armstrong to counter the nasty left-wing stolen-email frabications!
Waaaait a second ...
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Southerly: Sign this Petition, in reply to Bart Janssen,
For clarity – who exactly is Mr in-between?
Oh you know, the guy being messed with.
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Southerly: Sign this Petition, in reply to Vonnie,
But we are focusing on the good. The good that we live in a democracy where we can hold our representatives to account. Because we don't live in a fairy candy-floss land of sweetness and light where everyone is super nice to each other all the time and no one cries.
If we force the door open and allow the light to shine on what was previously kept in the dark, I think that's a win for democracy and every single person in this country.
Sure it's not past your bedtime?
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Hard News: Privacy and the Public Interest, in reply to Kumara Republic,
That they’ll lose their houses?
In a way, yes. I think that National are trying to convince people that a CGT will mean that the equity they have in their houses will go down. And given the over-obsession we have with owning a house in this country, any reduction in house prices will certainly hit households' balance sheets.
There are a lot of people out there who can see no further than that, who cannot see the housing market is already too bubbly, or who cannot mentally treat their house as if it were a place to live rather than an asset to be valued in dollar terms only.