Listen to Nick Smith trying to defend fudged foreign ownership data

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, August 2nd, 2016 - 22 comments
Categories: housing, national, useless - Tags: , , , , ,

The Nats are peddling dodgy statistics again – 3 per cent of NZ house buyers officially from overseas. Note “officially” not “actually”. As for last quarter the current figures are well fudged, and the real rate of foreign ownership could be anywhere between 3 and 48 percent. Labour points out some of the major problems – National continues to mislead with selective foreign buyers data

“National has removed the ability for corporations and trusts to be identified as foreign so has skewed the data from the start. They have also counted foreign students and temporary workers who don’t intend to stay in the country or live in the home they’ve bought as New Zealanders.

“Both these groups would be excluded from buying existing properties under Labour’s policy to ban non-resident foreign buyers.

“The Land Information data shows 2,300 properties were bought by non-residents in the last three months. A further 5,700 were bought by people here on temporary visas who did not intend to occupy the property.

“That’s 8000 houses sold to foreign buyers in the past three months – 13 per cent of total sales and four times the number the Government is claiming.

“National also continues to fudge the data by counting any property bought via a corporation or trust as a domestic sale. This is demonstrably misleading.

“Since the initial foreign data was released all New Zealand’s major banks have stopped lending to foreign buyers. They accept what National refuses to – that foreign buyers are a significant presence in housing market.

Anyone who believes the Nats’ figures needs to listen yesterday’s interview – Grant Robertson and Duncan Garner ask – Why won’t Nick Smith answer this one simple question? Excellent work from Garner.

22 comments on “Listen to Nick Smith trying to defend fudged foreign ownership data ”

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  1. Enough is Enough 1
    2 August 2016 at 10:35 am

    He would have been better off counting the number of buyers who have Chinese sounding names.

  2. Draco T Bastard 2
    2 August 2016 at 10:50 am

    As I say: National has to lie because reality never matches what they say their ideology will bring about.

  4. Wensleydale 4
    2 August 2016 at 11:24 am

    Statistics are wonderfully malleable things, aren’t they?

    “Plagued by an inconvenient political reality? Haemorrhaging public trust like a stuck pig? Embarrassed by your own blindingly apparent incompetence? Running in circles like a fox terrier with a firecracker tied to its tail? Don’t know what the fuck to do?! Make shit up. Just make that crap up. Pull it out of your arse. Statistics are like Play-Doh. You can make them into anything you like! Hooray!”

  5. DH 5
    2 August 2016 at 11:35 am

    Labour might also want to dig into the statistics a little. The LINZ report quotes this;

    “There were 57,678 property transfers registered with Land Information New Zealand from April to June 2016”

    That’s an average of 19,226 per month. I’m pretty sure I read that house sales in NZ were well below 10,000 per month, can anyone confirm the numbers? (REINZ report 7,864 sales nationwide in June but I don’t know if that covers all house sales)

    I suspect the word ‘transfer’ may have a different meaning to LINZ than it does to others. It could be transactions such as transferring your home to a family trust would be included in LINZ figures. It may also include commercial property(?)

    The point being…. if there’s a lot of local ‘transfers’ which aren’t actual sale & purchases it could skew the figures & make the percentage of foreign buyers look lower than it really is.

    • dukeofurl 5.1
      2 August 2016 at 5:29 pm

      Im guessing here, but some purchases may involve more than 1 Lot ? Each lot is a transfer but only one overall transaction.
      Rural land and larger sites may involve many lots. As well a subdivision could well produce 300 lots.

      • DH 5.1.1
        2 August 2016 at 8:21 pm

        We could guess a lot of things, perhaps that’s what they want us to do.

        What isn’t guesswork is the 3% they quote is almost certainly calculated from total property transfers – 1794 is 3% of 57,678.

        REINZ figures say there were 25,507 dwellings sold in that period. Presumably each of those sales is a single property transfer with LINZ, if so what are the remaining 32,171 transfers?

        I could note that 1794 is 7% of 25,507. If all foreign tax-resident buyers bought only dwellings and REINZ figures are correct then foreign buyers would make up 7% of house sales. Without clarification the numbers are worthless IMO.

    • RedBaronCV 5.2
      2 August 2016 at 10:02 pm

      Resurveying your property and depositing the plan can trigger Linz to do stuff like notify the council as if you where a new purchaser,

  6. Lanthanide 6
    2 August 2016 at 12:36 pm

    “Since the initial foreign data was released all New Zealand’s major banks have stopped lending to foreign buyers. They accept what National refuses to – that foreign buyers are a significant presence in housing market

    It’s nice rhetoric, but in itself, is just as misleading as what National is doing.

    The reasons the banks made that move was purely for PR reasons. There would be very few foreign investors who would be borrowing from NZ banks in order to buy property in NZ – why would they, when they can get much cheaper loans overseas?

    So by banning these foreign loans, of which there would have been very few (if any) anyway, they get a nice PR statement they can make to the public, without costing them much in the way of profit at all.

  7. save nz 7
    2 August 2016 at 1:22 pm

    On Planet Key, NZ is not a tax haven, foreigners and new residents are not buying up the country, and there is no housing crisis.

    It’s just so weird that the EU is investigating our tax dodging status, we were mentioned in the Panama papers 60,000 times, house prices are sky rocketing but wages are static, the real estate firms are now marketing to Chinese in China, and local people with jobs now live in cars.

    Must just be a glitch that Labour caused.

    Case closed.

    Off overseas to hang out with Royalty, sports people and Coup leaders while the bad news blows over.

    • adam 7.1
      2 August 2016 at 2:19 pm

      A bad and a bit of a inside the beltway joke, to those who understands anything about NZ political history.

      Sid Key – popular by his absence.

  8. Jack Ramaka 8
    2 August 2016 at 2:38 pm

    Would help if we got some independent verifiable data 2-3 years ago 90% of the people in Barfoots Auction Rooms were Asian, and many would have been new immigrants or people acting on behalf of new immigrants. John Key and National are meeting their objectives in the Asianification of Auckland.

    What concerns me with the mass immigration is the infrastructure is not here to support this immigration growth and is starting to get up peoples noses here in Auckland, the motorways are at a standstill most of the day.

    • Anno1701 8.1
      2 August 2016 at 3:11 pm

      “Asianification”

      i dont think race matters mate,

      • save nz 8.1.1
        2 August 2016 at 3:44 pm

        It is not about race or ethnicity, so no one wants to make it about that, but since we have few jobs in NZ and wages just keep getting lower with all the immigration but every thing else is rising in price and the last 10 years have not made NZ any richer or more efficient, so adding more people at levels beyond per captita higher than every other country is obviously going to cause big problems.

        From what you can work out from the media – it costs $125,000 in infrastructure per new house that the locals have to subsidise. Then there is the cost of the roads or transport for every new car or person who needs to travel, so now wait for it, the next bright idea from the government will be to start selling off the water companies to pay for the new infrastructure for the new people who happen to not be improving GDP or productivity in NZ… And for the 4th, 5th generation Kiwis of the same ethnicity is it helping them when they are probably culturally pretty different from the newbies even if they are the same ethnicity?

        Sounds like a re think in policy. Yep it is helping the Natz in the short term, but long term, Kiwis will wake up one day and find out that NZ is now got similar problems to Hong Kong and we may not be centrally run. I think most of the immigrants are trying to get away from that situation.

        And what is going to happen when we get pulled in two different superpower directions…

  9. Keith 9
    2 August 2016 at 7:23 pm

    Does anyone take Nick Smith the village idiot seriously? Nothing this guy says is worth a tin of shit!

  10. SimonM 10
    2 August 2016 at 7:46 pm

    Becoming tenants in our own country while Prick Smith obfuscates and fiddles….

    https://www.barfoot.co.nz/commercial/buying/faqs-overseas-buyers

  11. SimonM 11
    2 August 2016 at 9:39 pm

    And I thought Nick Smith was a useless wanker. Have a listen to this foran illustration of the competence of our current government…

    http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201810495/upston-defends-reliability-of-latest-foreign-buyer-numbers

    • Wensleydale 11.1
      2 August 2016 at 11:57 pm

      Nick Smith is a useless wanker. And Louise Upston is an obedient minion doing her best to spin, deny, evade and perpetuate the ludicrous myth that we’re “on the cusp of something special.”

  12. maninthemiddle 12
    3 August 2016 at 12:02 pm

    Corporations and Trusts registered in NZ not foreign entities, they are NZ entities. They operate here and pay tax here. Labour have lost this argument for good, and you’re continued efforts on their behalf is just sour grapes.

    • Nick K 12.1
      3 August 2016 at 11:39 pm

      Most trusts aren’t registered.

      Charitable trusts are, but they aren’t the concern.

  13. maninthemiddle 13
    9 August 2016 at 10:49 am

    If they operate in NZ, they pay tax in NZ. They are NZ entities, registered or not.

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