Hard News: Show some decency
164 Responses
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izogi, in reply to
We could stay on and rent out this house but that puts me in a position to make money from others for no other reason than to take someone’s money.
I don't really care for the housing market as an investment, but we've been looking for our own home for about 6 months now. We're fortunate to have a reasonable deposit and until now have mostly been renting for practical reasons. It's mostly a lack of finding what we want that's holding stuff up.
After a couple of recent life changes, renting suddenly feels much more like it's just throwing money into someone else's retirement fund, having to commit for a year based on a 10 minute surface inspection, being told you're not allowed to bolt your bookcases to the wall or get a proper TV antenna on the roof, and never having legal certainty about being able to stay anywhere longer than a year. With your own home, at least, the only money usually being thrown away is rates, a little extra insurance, and interest on a mortgage.
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Yes. Unfortunately I think the best way out of the housing bubble at this point would be for house prices to stay the same in absolute (not relative) terms, but for a bit more than average (recent) inflation to happen. If house prices actually fell, then there would be a lot of people who bought at the height of the market for their own occupancy rather than for speculation, who will end up with negative equity and feeling pain.
However, inflation seems to be frowned on, so this solution seems unlikely.
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Shyster…
Respect to the Creator,,,, ;-)
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And we need, everyone, to shun these people and what they represent.
Pity ostracism isnt used anymore.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
But then I don't understand why people support Key in the first place. I guess this is how Tories felt from 1999 - 2007.
Three famous words from John Steinbeck probably sum it up: temporarily embarrassed millionaires. And later on, his spiritual successor Bruce Springsteen echoed, "poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king, and a king ain't satisfied till he rules everything."
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Yes. Unfortunately I think the best way out of the housing bubble at this point would be for house prices to stay the same in absolute (not relative) terms, but for a bit more than average (recent) inflation to happen. If house prices actually fell, then there would be a lot of people who bought at the height of the market for their own occupancy rather than for speculation, who will end up with negative equity and feeling pain.
If the housing bubble burst in the US is anything to go by, it'll be tricky to pop the NZ housing bubble without 'middle NZ' taking a massive haircut.
Iceland had a similar meltdown with its banking system, but instead rejected the usual bank bailout orthodoxy, and surprisingly they managed to climb out of their predicament. Why it hasn't received wider coverage boggles the mind.
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Dismal Soyanz, in reply to
We have invested so much into housing, as a nation, that a lot of our household wealth is tied up in it, so there is a strong personal incentive for those who have equity tied up in their houses to want to protect it. Engineering a scenario where house prices remained stagnant on a real basis is probably much harder than bursting the bubble. It seems to me that the bubble needs to burst if only to restore some sanity. Of course, there is the argument that it is population growth that is driving housing demand but from the research I've read (including this from Motu - a bit dated now but population growth in the years since 2008 appears to have been lower than the preceding 6 years) suggests that the causality is not as strong as some would have you think.
I've moved house a couple of times in the last decade but each time it was done on the basis that the house I bought was where I planned to live for the foreseeable future. The market value of the house was of little relevance except at the time when I had to sell (not by choice). I think therein lies a problem with the way many of us look at housing - as something to hold for some time before moving on to something bigger and better. YMMV.
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Dismal Soyanz, in reply to
Pity ostracism isnt used anymore.
But Ostrichism is alive and well...
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
<We now return to normal programming…>
Nah Dismal. Our move is at the wishes of t'others Mum really. We wanted to do what was right. We have taken a sabbatical for winter to slob around instead of being puppets in our own land. summer tho' outta Aux. Stell was born in the small st we are going to. Free. Our wishes are granted. We are lucky we have a property in Central Auckland that will give a retirement plan. But we planned to live forever in AK because we bought within our means. The increase in value is a bonus and I appreciate that but for me the increase in value is that someone else is going to love what we have done. That's it, as you were. :)
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Sorry to hear about Stella.
As for the words, I momentarily confused two with unfortunately similar sounds.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
it’s irrelevant
no it isn't.
Stella is a character.
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izogi, in reply to
If house prices actually fell, then there would be a lot of people who bought at the height of the market for their own occupancy rather than for speculation, who will end up with negative equity and feeling pain.
Looking around Wellington (mostly northern/western) as a buyer, there are some which are extremely popular and go quick, but there also seem to be quite a lot of houses still on the market after many months that simply aren’t selling. From what we’ve seen elsewhere, owners seem to be demanding too much and not getting it, and we’ve wondered if that’s maybe because they paid more than they really should have to begin with…. or they expected prices to keep spiraling upwards and they didn’t. It’s definitely caused us to think very carefully about how high-an-offer we actually want to put on any place we’re keen on… not because we’re in it for a big investment so much as having a good thing to live in, but if there’s some change meaning we need to sell up in 3 or 4 years, it’d be good to not be throwing lots away. Possibly that’s why we’re still looking. Of course the longer it takes, the more cash we’re burning in rent so I guess it’s a trade-off. :(
Also, tenders are evil when you’re a buyer. They seem to be everywhere right now, too, and they suck. I understand how they’re good for sellers if a property’s likely to be very popular, but they seem to be being used much further than that, and vendors must be missing out on some reasonable offers here and there because of it. We’ve certainly had to ditch putting offers on some that we liked because we needed to prioritise which mystery magic number tender to go for. Very frustrating.
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2002
Labour: 41.26%
National: 20.93%
NZ First: 10.38%
Act: 7.14%
Green: 7%
UF: 6.69%
Prog: 1.70%
others 4.89%Here’s a fun game. Look at the current polls with National around 48% and Labour 27% and shuffle those numbers.
At the end of it there’s probably about 5-7% sitting in National that Labour could nick (given 7% or so has shifted to the Greens).
margin of error: +/- 4 bourbans
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Dismal Soyanz, in reply to
Of course the longer it takes, the more cash we’re burning in rent so I guess it’s a trade-off.
Of course the comparison should be rent less interest on your deposit (or whatever equity you put in at the start that is presumably in your bank now) vs mortgage + rates + maintenance. It's surprising how few people actually do the math.
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Buy a house.
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Hebe,
I revisited the feeling of New Zealand society during the Springbok tour yesterday.
A family member -- educated and socially liberal -- and I were comparing notes about our quake insurance "stuff" when we strayed into politics and the chance of a government change and whether it would help our individual situations. Somehow I casually mentioned Nicky Hager.
The 1981 Tour face appeared immediately. Closed, slightly disapproving, and very much "I'm not going to get into THAT man's nonsense thank you".
I stopped short, surprised by the blanking, because most people around me accept Dirty Politics as having large amounts of truth, even if the details are not totally clear and proven.
I also saw that cut-off reaction en masse at the Christchurch leaders' debate.
Is it all too big, too complex for people to understand? Do they refuse to believe that level of systematic and sustained wrongdoing could exist in New Zealand? Do they not care? Do they despise Hager so much that they cannot hear or see what he is saying? Have they swallowed the spin so fully that our democracy is under threat? What don't they get?
Thanks Russell for writing this: you perfectly capture my appalled shock at all of it. Is THIS what our country has come to? -
Hebe,
I revisited the feeling of New Zealand society during the Springbok tour yesterday.
A family member – educated and socially liberal – and I were comparing notes about our quake insurance “stuff” when we strayed into politics and the chance of a government change and whether it would help our individual situations. Somehow I casually mentioned Nicky Hager.
The 1981 Tour face appeared immediately. Closed, slightly disapproving, and very much “I’m not going to get into THAT man’s nonsense thank you”.
I stopped short, surprised by the blanking, because most people around me accept Dirty Politics as having large amounts of truth, even if the details are not totally clear and proven.
I also saw that cut-off reaction en masse at the Christchurch leaders’ debate.
Is it all too big, too complex for people to understand? Do they refuse to believe that level of systemic and sustained wrongdoing could exist in New Zealand? Do they not care? Do they despise Hager so much that they cannot hear or see what he is saying? Have they swallowed the spin so fully that our democracy is under threat? What don’t they get?
Thanks Russell for writing this: you perfectly capture my appalled shock at all of it.
Is this what our country has come to?
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stever@cs.waikato.ac.nz, in reply to
Yes, thanks Russell, and also Hebe.
I think that we have here the opposite of the "big lie" (of which "someone" once said, if it's a big enough lie then no one will believe you could have told such an un-truth, and so they'll believe you)---we have the "big truth"...it's a big enough truth, and has such implications, so they'll not believe you.
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I think people have a lot invested in a certain world view (that John Key is a nice man, that generally people/our leaders are decent and want to do the right thing, etc). It’s difficult to challenge because it effectively means they have to admit they’re wrong, and aren’t as smart, sophisticated, well-informed, etc as they thought. That they had a fast one pulled on them and now they look silly.
Far easier to resort to the time-worn sport of messenger shooting.
Take a crumb of comfort from the Nixon analogies: his approval rating was 60% around the time of Watergate, and it took a long time to make a dent in that, but history has not exactly judged him kindly.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
House of the rising shun...
Pity ostracism isnt used anymore
Though I hear Coventry is nice this time of year...
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Ummm .... err .... wow .....
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Lucy Telfar Barnard, in reply to
Though I hear Coventry is nice this time of year…
Coventry is not nice at any time of year. It's a boghole. I've heard it described as "the armpit of England".
The post-war cathedral is pretty cool though.Also, tenders are evil when you’re a buyer.
I agree Izogi - though I have sold by tender, and it certainly got us a good price at the time.
Tenders seem to be a particular feature of the Wellington market, popularised by Leaders (who had large market share) in the 2000s. At the time I attributed some of the rise in property prices to their use, though of course it would be difficult to prove that. Auckland persists with auctions, which I would never use as a vendor, but I wonder whether their price rises would be even worse if tenders were more popular. -
I have friends who live in Coventry, one was the local Labour councilor who quit (the party) over Blair's descent into war and devilry, but yes the city suffered more than its share of WW2 bombing
And don't forget all the wonderful ska that came from there .....
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Ummm …. err …. wow ….
This is the new 'governance' paradigm - all systems are there to be 'gamed' - it seems to be the only way forward - and it tends to make everyone complicit.
National is all about sharing the guilt, but not the wealth....and let's not forget Brownlee's office was at it, too...
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Ian’s been, “sent to Coventry” over that comment.
Having a good time, wish you were here…
;- )
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