Written By:
weka - Date published:
10:27 am, November 18th, 2019 - 97 comments
Categories: housing, tenants' rights -
Tags: landlords, renting
The government announced new tenancy protection regulations yesterday. From RNZ,
The proposed changes include:
- Limiting rent increases to once every 12 months
- Banning rental bidding
- Ending no-cause evictions
- An increase to financial penalties
- Tenants will be able to add minor fittings and improvements, such as baby proofing or hanging pictures.
A bill setting out the proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 is expected to be introduced to Parliament in the first half of next year.
Some snips from twitter this morning,
If this forces the bad landlords out, I'm ok with that. Collins is lying when she says letting them treat renters badly creates more cheaper rentals. The only way out of the housing crisis is for the state to mandate the right to a home. Each new reg should be based in that. https://t.co/wSWQYtoeX7
— weka đŹ âđŹ (@wekatweets) November 17, 2019
https://twitter.com/DylanReeve/status/1196147573607690240
âAt the moment, property managers probably feel like farmersâ. What, you mean a powerful group who have had everything their own way for so long that even the slightest challenge to their privilege makes them feel like theyâre âunder siegeâ? https://t.co/UVzkvHtIys
— Rhys Jones đ”đž #FreePalestine (@rg_jones) November 17, 2019
Alongside our call for a comprehensive WOF and more support for tenancy advocates – we need to have a control setting around rents, thousands more public and state homes and hey build to rent, and an increase in the lowest incomes including core benefits and a living wage.
— đłïžââ§ïžMarama Davidson MP (@MaramaDavidson) November 17, 2019
I definitely feel this is a situation where Labour need to be encouraged to keep doing the right things. Each step that gives renters more security (of tenancy, a healthy home, affordable rent) takes us to a culture where housing is for providing NZ citizens with a home and away from the culture that says homelessness and poverty are collateral damage in the middle class quest for investment income. When we centre homes as a human right the solutions to the housing crisis become clearer.
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40,000 Unoccupied dwellings in Auckland.
With the housing shortage this is obscene and there should be penalties for this.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/property/116027291/worrying-rise-in-empty-homes-in-auckland-highlighted-in-census-2018
Hate to point this out but the new legislation won't do anything but make this worse. Much needed is something that will encourage utilisation of empty homes.
In the meantime I look forward to the flood of homes for sale from LL’s exiting the business.
Looking forward to hanging pictures.
how will it make things worse?
I would think that because they are afraid of getting a bad tenant they can't get rid of, they might decide not to have any at all. But who knows? Property takes time to move so they might realise that the changes are actually more supportive of long term relationships with tenants which seems to me to make business easier.
right, in which case the govt will need to follow up these regs with regs and incentives to not let properties remain empty in areas where there is a housing shortage. This is what I mean about putting home rights in the centre. We can't hold off on the things that will improve housing because there are a range of issues that need to be resolved, nor because the investor class is holding us to ransom.
I am sure that in the current market landlords wishing to find better returns elsewhere will have no difficulty in selling their property. Most find short term tenants more trouble than longer term tenants anyway. Where do you think they will invest their capital for better returns, "A"?
I agree that something is needed to encourage utilisation of empty homes – here is one possibility:
https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/empty-homes-tax-frequently-asked-questions.aspx
Vancouver empty home tax has been around for awhile so should be easy to see if this is a good idea or not. Will check out later…
Where to invest other than real estate?
I like https://www.royaltyexchange.com/ and peer to peer lending mainly due to the simplicity. Peer to peer is particularly appealing because it doesn't require much to start so a kid can do it, but still can scale up to larger amounts.
Sprott for resource investing, Sovereign Man 4th pillar for finding large gains with the smallest risk possible, possibly EuroPacific Capital might be great, and various crypto assets. Of course all of these are more international type investments but I think that might would be better in the current environment.
I did email Martin North (DFA blog) to ask if he had any financial advisors to refer me to in NZ who think like he does. He didn't but said he would let me know if he came across anyone. Obviously this type of person wouldn't be into real estate.
In any case renters would be better off investing rather than borrowing for an overpriced shackle that will likely fall by 30% or more in the next two years.
How's the empty house tax impacted rental prices in Vancouver?
EDIT: No matter I found out. Not much impact at all other than increased revenue for the city.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-vancouver-councillors-support-empty-homes-tax-despite-dubious-results/
great let them sell, people will be buying.
they are still not loosing the poor dears.
A levy on residences left empty without a compelling reason ,and one on unutilised land,needs to be introduced.
I'm in favour of that except I'd put the levy on when the empty land gets sold. Many NZers build a house on land that they've owned for years, because they can afford the land but not the house build at the same time, so there is a lag in between. What we want is to stop people speculating on land sales, which is different than land being empty. This applies to individual titles, not developer land.
As a lot of people get the land some time before they build, because they cannot afford both, I agree with Weka.
cough… squatter's rights …cough.
The sentiments are certainly sound – whether enough seeps through the cracks in the redoubts of vested interest and neoliberal inanity to make a positive difference remains to be seen.
The aim must be to give tenants longterm security of tenure. In I think Germany, there are heaps of tenants who live in the same rental for lifetimes. Rent increases are limited, and good tenants and landlords get along respectfully.
The rhetoric against changes announced yesterday seem to miss the point.
One additional change I would like to see – if a tenant wins a dispute at the tenancy tribunal, the tenant should have the right to have their identity suppressed and the right to keep their use of the tribunal private (i.e. not disclosed to future prospective landlords).
At present a tenant can take a shitty landlord to the tribunal, win….and then have trouble getting another rental for the rest of their lives.
yes!
Assc Minister Kris Faafoi has been listening – it's in there!
Brilliant! I've only read the summary on RNZ so far, not all the detail yet.
Yes, the tenant will always lose in the long run.
I thought that was one of the changes.
These are small steps in the right direction, far, far short of a full German-style rental regime. The reported objections from landlords are pathetic and should be ignored.
I doubt you can have affordable rents without property prices significantly falling (one way or the other). But NZ is addicted to the idea that owning a property should entitle you to large capital gains year on year (with no thought as to where all that money is actually coming from!). Breaking out of the current property price madness is politically difficult.
crunch time for the liberal middle classes who want a solution to the housing crisis on compassionate grounds but can't quite make the connection with their own decisions. I see few people saying they're will for their house GV or market value to drop.
???
There are capital gains because prices are rising.
Prices are rising because the pool of buyers is growing faster than the pool of houses is growing, and buyers can get cheap credit.
Phil Twyford just discovered that it's not easy to build houses in New Zealand.
There's a lesson in that, if Labour and the wider left are smart enough to take it…
The expectation that tenants or the government will continue paying ever increasing rents is the real issue.
It is called the market. Demand is outstripping supply. In that case the price goes up. It ain't rocket science.
If this market you speak of, is so efficient why does the Govt pay around 2.5billion in accommodation supplements per an.?
Did I state it was efficient? I am stating these policy proposals will make it even more inefficient than it currently is.
You just contradicted yourself.
'It is called the market'…means what exactly?
Ummm… you can have inefficient markets. It usually happens when there is over regulation such as in the Housing market.
Slums are very efficient.
This is so funny. Perhaps you can solve Climate change by mandating the weather not to get too hot. Marama Davidson's calls are especially hilarious. There is only one outcome of setting price controls below the market rate and that is shortages of supply. Marama Davidson is essentially advocating for more homelessness. Congrats on that Marama
only one outcome of setting price controls below the market rate and that is shortages of supply
Poppycock.
Since little or no housing is being built for rental that effect would negligible. There might be an increase in slumlords leaving the market, returning their properties to possible occupier ownership, which would be a net positive.
Not if supply fails to meet demand even further than it is at the moment. Then you get more HOMELESSNESS.
Because dwellings just disappear if landlords don't rent them out?
Just how many slumlords can wear the rates on a property that has no tenant while they wait for the value to increase and give them a capital gain?
Oh there will be a short term impact on the housing market as landlords unwilling to take on the extra costs and risks offload their properties. However it will soon be swallowed up by the massive under supply of new house builds. On top Renters who still won't be able to afford to buy a place will now have even less properties to choose from and rents will skyrocket. These are unfortunately the poorest section of society.
That is a profession of faith.
You sad devotion to theoretical demand and supply curves is merely a distraction from reality, and your concern for the poor would be touching if it were honestly-held.
There are many wider factors at play in the property market than banning rental bidding and slowing rent increases. Let the leeches suck the blood more slowly, it won't do them any harm and it will be better for their prey.
You keep believing you can beat the market McFlock. It will only be the little people that will get hurt after all.
The only difference between you and Israel Folau is the flavour of magical entity you believe in.
And I can physically see the results of mine đ
Wishful thinking and blinkers are shared by you both. He literally just gave a speech where he claimed to see the results of his.
Except his was done AFTER the event. I am making the prediction BEFORE.
Regardless of how the economic entrails fall, you'll interpret them to suit your "prediction".
Just like you always do.
No, no. I'm quite happy to make the prediction now. The rental property market will get worse for renters if any of these politcies become a reality UNLESS demand suddenly drops off (unlikely) or there is some stimulus applied to the supply side outside these policies.
See? Both ways, no specifics on magnitude. And given that the govt has spent the last two years also trying to affect the "supply side" of the housing market in a variety of ways (with good success in state housing, not so hot on kiwibuild, dunno how the prefab plant is working up, there's also moves on consents processes I think), there is literally no way your comment is falsifiable. If rents go up, you'll say "yay me". If rents go down you'll say "supply-side efforts like I said, yay me".
You made a religious proclamation, not a prediction.
My position is definitely falsifiable. If all other elements I mention remain constant then I predict the policy proposals being touted will lead to increased rents and/or homelessness. I would expect it to take significantly more houses (above the long term average increase) and/or significantly less demand (below the recent increases) to affect this. These are easily identifiable.
lols
meanwhile, in the real world…
And then I stated you could quantify the scale of the impact of the changes IF they DID occur. If there is only a modest increase in supply such as we have at the moment then the changes to the Rental laws will drive up rental prices.
BTW the Dashborad you linked to looks REALLY sad for people looking to get a home. The government is failing miserably on this front.
No, you just opened your way to an argument about the meaning of "significantly" in order to defend your catechism.
How many landlords will fail to meet the grade? How many of them will neither sell nor let out their derelict buildings, so the houses are truly removed from the market?
It's not a convincing kite to fly Gosman. Have you got any rational criticisms?
My criticisms have already started to happen with the limited amount of reforms the current government has made to date. Is it easier or harder to find rental property in NZ today than it was prior to the last election do you think?
https://thespinoff.co.nz/business/25-02-2019/think-the-rental-squeeze-is-bad-now-its-probably-about-to-get-worse/
That can as easily be attributed to the mass immigration policy as to your boojums.
Same old same old – a rant and a happenstance of vaguely conforming data – such things as Gosmantrolling is made of.
"Not if supply fails to meet demand even further than it is at the moment. Then you get more HOMELESSNESS."
This is the situation we are in already. So your argument just sounds like let's accept there will always be homelessness and housing crisis driven poverty, because TINA and at least it's not worse. Poppycock. This is just the investor class saying their right to profit trumps people's right to a home and now lecturing the left that the housing crisis the investor class created in the first place and serves them really fucking well can't be changed.
Build some more houses, stop being greedy, let the govt pass some laws that shift existing houses out of capital gains capture and back into providing homes.
Ummm…. it can get worse you know. Much worse.
Says the dude with a vested interest in maintaining the power of the investor class who are already making the situation worse.
TINA! TINA! TINA, I TELL YOU!
I'm not a landlord nor a renter so it has no direct impact on me.
you're a cheerleader for the investor class though.
Not at all. I also cheer lead for the consumer class.
Come on Gosman, not need to be shy about your politics.
Meh – you only troll for the parasites.
Cars have to be registered and have wofs. They are an important asset for people and useful to the citizens of the country. Why not houses, just keeping a check on problems and if they get fixed. At present I wouldn't pass but if that was noted, and I get the process of painting etc on a time and payment schedule, it would not be onerous. The wof would only relate to practical maintenance and not involve snooping for misdemeanours against Council planning requirements.
There seems a tendency to dream up champagne requirements for those with beer incomes, and not bothering wealthy businesspeople too much with regs is now disavowed, and the regs descend like a stormburst after drought.
Do you think Car rental prices should be capped as well?
Do you think they should be subsidised by the Govt?
Public transport should be free.
No such thing as free public transport.
It's free to the public.
It's not. It's free to the people who use it. The public still pays big time for it.
Public transport should be free for the people that use it, and it also brings great benefit to everyone.
It's free for the public to use.
And even provides public economic benefits via lower infrastructure maintenance and higher economic activity. You know, like billionaires, but really.
In fact everyone pays less overall. All the roads we don't have to build.
Gosman you seem very excited about the shitty landlords post. Are you one or related to one? Your blues swamp the comments list. What's up, and why do you respond and question my analogy about cars? Does your life depend on quashing everything anyone says?
Does not take much talk of “rights for renters” to get the neo rentiers and property flickers squealing. More professional landlords are often in it for the longer haul. The Govt. has done well already by abolishing letting fees and putting in minimum dwelling standards.
Young NZers in particular deserve much more than paying off some one else’s mortgage, when they do not have secure tenure and decent rights as some recompense for their extortionate rents.
10 years going hard out building public housing would be a start. When supply is squared up a bit, time for rent control! Private developers prefer to cherry pick the McMansion market and Building/construction Co.s and suppliers seem to just want their profits. So…if they won’t acquire some public spirit, import flat packs and build modular. A nice kick in the nuts for them too.
Fair enough. Why do you think that Labour hasn't advocated for this and The Greens haven't costed a plan for it?
The first thing that needs to be done is wipe out rent subsidies and make landlords wear the difference between what the tenant is paying out of their own pocket and what is being charged .
As long as landlords have a government gaurentee on the rental income the housing market will always be skewed and screwed.
Or there will be even less people willing to rent out properties.
Do ANY of your proposals involve actually increasing supply?
More state houses ,lots and lots of them .
Can you not see how rent subsidies are just making it worse .
We've been proposing increasing supply, here for a long time.
Building state houses in the scale we managed in the 50's.
Successfully, and with "printed money" by the way.
Of course right wingers only believe in printing money, if banks charge interest for it. Or it is free money to bail bankers out of their fuckups.
Of course cutting the demand from 350 000 “guest workers”, 70 000 new people, capital gains farming ,and foreign money launderers, is also required.
You may have advocated for it but for some reason the actual parties you support aren't delivering massive amounts of new State houses.
Do you want lots more state houses or not Gosman. It's hard to tell.
I'm not terribly fussed where the extra houses will come from. I just doubt the capacity of the State sector to do it. I'm willing to be surprised but the market is not going to be satisfied by an extra 1000 or so State houses every year. Do you know what the deficit is between the demand for housing versus the supply at the moment?
Nope. Do you know what the difference is between supply and numbers of existing houses? The problem with not caring where the extra houses come from is that we don't have a shortage of houses in NZ, there are plenty. We have a shortage of houses available at affordable cost for people to live in. If the state doesn't control house building across the board, then the costs will just keep increasing. We can already see that simply having more houses doesn't create more supply.
You are wrong. There is a shortage of houses in NZ. That's the cause of all the woes.
Unless we address the demand factors that make housing an attractive 'investment' more supply will not fix the problem, Gos.
Gosman, you do understand that there are more empty houses in NZ right now than there are people to live in them, right?
My thinking atm is around how we can shift the stalemate where the middle classes won't support a strong left wing govt because of how it would impact on their housing capital.
National's policy on "old, run down state houses" – replace 'em! Who needs 'em anyway? Some were salivating at the 'opportunities' attached to such 'replacement.' There is, however, a clear alternative re state houses.
Good legislation. I'm (almost inadvertently) a landlord and sort of a tenant myself at present.
I rented out my apartment for a few years when we rented a bigger place for doing the video edit on one of my partners docos. Then we moved back in 2012
My partner decided that she was going to buy an apartment a couple of years ago, and that she was going to do it on her own. All she could afford with any certainty about location and integrety about quality was another one bedroom apartment in the same block. So she scraped up her assets to get a deposit, and brought it for just about 2.5x times the value I brought mine for back in 1998.
Then she dragged me upstairs to help pay for it as a semi-tenant đ I couldn't see any reason to sell my apartment just in case we did something weird like break up. That doesn't seem too likely as she moved into my apartment in 2008 – which seems like a lifetime ago. But shit happens…
Ran my apartment as a airbnb for about a year because my sister was doing that to a room in her house, and when she was fixing up their bach and launch. She was willing to do the most of the work for a substantial cut. When she started to look at purchasing and running a business, I rented it out as a furnished one bedroom. Initially using a property manager while I was doing a lot of work in Singapore. More recently myself.
"Okay, cool. None of that changes anything for me, all sounds sensible."
That pretty much describes me as well. Of course it helps that my tenants are in the same block.
I’d have to look up the tenancy agreement, but I think that I already have a 90 day notice (and 30 days the other way). Rent changes only happen yearly – but I’ve never raised rents except if tenants change (good tenants are pure gold). We do the tenancy yearly. I fix things that I can, but it is pretty modern so that happens seldom.
RNZ have republished a long article from 2018 on the Tenancy Tribunal and predicaments renters can find themselves in, it is an interesting read:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/365295/why-renters-won-t-complain-about-landlords
Thanks Uncooked. Illuminating. System clearly needs revision.
Maybe there should be a star rating for Landlords so that Tenants can get fair warning of bad landlords. I bet landlords have done bad stuff previously.
I have a very nice house that I have spent $60000 on lately ,that could be a rental but I don't need the hassle . Getting good tenants is like finding opals. A worker on the farm who has been here for 9 years and is waiting for his residents visa will be hopefully moving in after the slow coaches at immigration NZ finally process his application. He will then bring his wife and son out to NZ . God willing.
Oh cool, you're going to let them live in it for free.
No, it won't be free but will be at a minimal rental to satisfy IRD. Will bump his salary up to cover the shortfall. Good employees are like gold and need to be treated accordingly. Good tenants no doubt exist but I am much happier having an empty home in the meantime.
what's the IRD requirement?
If rent is too low will be considered a fringe benefit and subject to that tax.
I believe finding dependable tenants to pay astronomical sums is becoming easier in the Far North. Contacting the 128 unsuccessful applicants with their bad news has become the hard bit.
Last one being let that I'm familiar with went to a near retiring couple who will spend 12 days of every fortnight at their Auckland home and every 2nd weekend at this coastal place they're renting.