On Stuff today, another "woe is us" story about landlords' pain and suffering. The source? A thing calling itself "Stop the War on Tenancies", which pretends to be an organisation representing property investors, but is in fact nothing more than one guy with a…

Herald guy apologises if ...

Delete IF. Get IT.

(but in fairness, the other voices in this story do "get it", and don't deserve to be tarred by association. The Herald, on the other hand ...)

I'm not seeing a major philosophical distinction between this and Bill English's dismissal of the disadvantaged as the drug-addled authors of their own misfortune. Especially so when Matthew Hooton…

His position seemed to be "If the agent's saying it's a 'motivated seller' or whatever, then it'd be just plain wrong…

Still, the poor(?) little fella seemed to genuinely believe that he was only advocating the kind of thing that they've been giving out Queens Service Medals and JP-hoods for.

His antics have cost the Auckland Property Investors' Association their ANZ sponsorship, which was quick. Apparently other sponsors are also evaluating their involvement.

I hope he's a tipping point in the housing bubble debate.

Otoh, I have a friend who seriously needed to get out of Auckland and he now works for the APN-owned Pagemasters, working on Aussie newspaper copy from…

The real story is this: Young people buying a home either need to move out of Auckland, get some cash from their folks, shack up with someone who can, or build a time machine.

I don't know that we are, TBH. A lot of our employment is simply not suited to remote working (hard to milk cows and show tourists around without being present, at least for now), and knowledge industries actually benefit from in-person…

It illustrates the trade-off between cheap houses and gainful employment in NZ. Unless of course, you're a farmer, or a company director who can afford to heli-commute. NZ Inc is still behind the 8-ball on telecommuting.

... in Rotorua. He hasn't bought in Auckland.

Once these property pieces have done their online headline dash, both the Herald…

...he…

You forget, today is Good Friday when we celebrate murdering that trouble-making son of a god. In other news, some prophet gets a weekend holiday in heaven before being sent back down "but daaaad!!" "get back down there and clean that mess up" "it's not faaaiiiiirrr! You never…

Didn't Jesus cast Goldman Sachs from the temple over two thousand years ago? Somebody obviously screwed up and let the buggers back in.

It's almost the same prohibition on usury that Christians have. Not that you'd know that from watching the Christians. There's an interesting summary of the subject here. I looked at using…

However, the data the…

I'm amazed that he could persuade the court that he should be allowed to do that. Normal children can't sign contracts until they're 18, even if they have guarantors. The common practice is for the parents to pretend that they're carrying out the…

For comparison:

* Australia: 11.5% (2015)
* Canada: 13.2% (2016)
* China: 12% (2012), 15% (2016)
* Ireland: 10.4% (2005, before the bubble burst)
* UK: 11% (2015)
* USA: 8.9% (2006, before Great Recession)

And the RE industry makes up 17% of our GDP.

http://www.interest.co.nz/property/87021/barfoot-auctions-achieve-sales-rates-two-thirds-central-auckland-properties-one-third#comment-915184

Seen the Congestion Free Network v2? Lots more sideways connectedness.

Could it be that government rent subsidies push up rents for everyone, and help inflate prices in the lower end of the housing…

Still more cruelly much of the public transport infrastructure is of most benefit to people who live centrally. The further out you…

There's evidence that any "subsidy" is a recent phenomenon, and that it's a symptom of the casino economy created by an overheated property market. Until recently, Christchurch City…

Why? On a narrow definition, sure, if the renters aren't paying the full costs of their accommodation, then getting them to move into houses that they fully…

Nobody is willing to plan for the long term. Somehow we've come to accept that it's Ok for our governments to…

Or, at the very least, do what the Australians do and prohibit them from buying existing housing stock. If their money is welcome in the housing cycle it should be right at the genesis of a property.

The Auckland property market is a giant Ponzi scheme that is kept alive by new entrants — domestic and foreign — piling in. As soon as that tapers off, the Ponzi is in deep trouble. The Herald is very interested…

This seems to have been conventional wisdom until well within living memory. Once the property market overheated it all appears to have evaporated as if it had…

I truly hope that Labour's time in the wilderness has…

A friend of a relative recently showed a group of non-resident investors 32 residential properties in and around Hamilton.

The group purchased 28 of the properties before flying…

This short piece in the herald makes the point that the national party endorses the idea that not being able to buy a house in Auckland is a moral failure for the individual. Whereas 10% of the population owning 50% of the wealth is the real failure.

How many people were sleeping on the street in the Muldoon era – my partner remembers very few, but not sure whether than was because they had state houses and jobs sweeping railway platforms, or were locked…

It's not a supply and demand thing. If it were, then at some point (as with out of season tomatoes or imported Japanese cars) a price level would have been reached where people weren't prepared to buy Auckland properties any more. By any rational…

Does anyone have similar stats for the rest of the OECD? Google seems to be a bit scattershot right now. In any…

Interesting and terrifying thought. Certainly the Government of the last decade has been in thrall to the notion of incrementalism as a virtue (with the successful navigation of things…

FTFY

I'd say via most immigrants live in Auckland, we want fewer immigrants in Auckland, we don't have the means to stop them moving where they like once they're here... ergo, we need to permit…

One way…

How, exactly, would you do that? Incentives to live in the regions, which will then suffer the same kinds of infrastructure and housing-price stress as Auckland but with a far lower starting point in terms…

* Change our immigration policy settings to massively reduce the number of people moving to Auckland.
* Disallow non-residents from purchasing real estate
* Implement a capital gains tax (except on the…

You ain't kidding. Nearly 77% of the national wealth is tied up in residential property (scroll down for the pretty horizontal bar graph titled "New Zealand Asset Classes").

Pretty much. It's an asset that's easy to understand, over which you have a lot of control, and…

Amazing.

in which __"(Phil) Twyford praised the Herald for its property coverage because he said it showed what was really going on and had resulted in people calling…

This Companies Office entry indicates that Ron Hoy Fong recently re-registered a company in the name of Richmastery, the get-rich-quick “property education” company that left a trail of victims before the GFC.

Here’s the Herald’s 2009 report on Richmastery going into liquidation. By, er, Anne Gibson.

Simple really when you think about it.

So ... a plague upon their houses ... perhaps we need some Aussie termites

People fighting over surf breaks and arguing about $50,000+ cars are not really the criminal elements most people fear. In that area you're far more likely to get run off the…

How does it compare to the Sutherland Shire, where the Cronulla riots happened a bit over a decade ago?

But that is a whole other topic:…

$30k doesn't get you overly far against a deposit requirement of, at pretty much barest minimum, 10%. The only places for $300k tend to be apartments, and the banks are much more…

first inner-city Sydney job the company smartarse

Ah yes, the Lesser Australian Dickhead, a promiscuous species seen in a wide variety of habitats throughout the country. An introduced species, commonly regarded as a pest if not a plague, very resilient in the face of attempts…

It…

I think it would be more accurate to say that capital gains after inflation are undertaxed. Australia used to do this explicitly, taxing everything after inflation when you sold the property. It was quite straightforward and seemed fair to most people.

But Howard "simplified"…

This is not widely understood, but if I buy a house on an 80% mortgage and it appreciates…

I am wary of the "boomers are…

And if you're an inveterate suburbanite couple you get jobs in Takapuna and Albany with a sweet commute from your North Shore house, then one of your companies…

I agree but it looks like Little is doing a much better job at losing the election than National expected.

Yeah, Auckland's highly-paid jobs are largely concentrated in the CBD, which accounts for, from…

I was about to say "come to Sydney, we have cheap houses close to PT and…

There are three – count them, three – suburbs in Auckland with a…

This is still my theory about…

Of course. But only people who aren’t actually trying to do it can even possibly buy into that narrative.

It also works on those parents too selfish or…

In addition to derailing the neoliberal just-world orthodoxy, a bailout of toxic mortgages would also drive…

Now the Herald thinks we're expected to mortgage our retirement savings to…

It also works on those parents too selfish or feckless to lend/give their kids that crucial two-or-three-hundred-thousand (say it quickly and it doesn't sound like much). Pity the parents who don't…

It's also interesting that 'young couple buy a house' is rare enough to be considered newsworthy. Kind of undermines…

these articles do buy into the narrative that if you forgo smashed avo and work hard you too can own a home (with mummies and daddies help) – if young people weren't so lazy and drugged up…

I think you've confused mortgages with banks, individuals will be left to the market...

I imagine if the fabled Great Correction does eventuate, it will be framed as a National Crisis, and the government will attempt to prevent all those mortgages from going upside-down. That will be expensive.

It’ll go for way more than its rateable value, though. QV’s mid-range value on that property is $660,000, which still makes it one of the cheaper houses in…

As an example, Glen, this fine specimen filters out of TradeMe's results when the maximum price is the extravagant sum of $500k. That won't even be the bottom 10%, which…

Closest I recall is probably Aranui, maybe Shirley. Even so, in Auckland terms those are more "the rough end of the North Shore" than "the bad part of South Auckland". But yeah, I could have added "gunshot…

Anyone able to translate the worst parts of Otara…

Only those who have no other options. Buying the bottom-end houses is rarely a good idea because they tend to stay at the bottom of the market. Viz, as house…

Bottom quartile in Auckland is, last I saw, in the vicinity of $600k, meaning a 20% deposit of around $120k, and competing with speculators who are eyeing up the gentrification-induced capital gains that come…

What I dislike about the property stories is that when it…

I never understand why the media focus is always on what the AVERAGE price is doing. I'm…

So if you can't save $22,000 a year you're getting further away from buying that median house, not closer. I have been through the "watch my…

There's a very consistent theme of parental largesse that runs through most of these stories, be it wedding gifts, equity gifts, or room and board at below-market rates (frequently…

The Herald has to be making a fair…

and then probably all the dead baby boomers' personal credit card debt will skew the system (not everybody's parents are rich or living within their means)...

Yeah, that's the underlying assumption in most of these stories.

Live at home for free, don’t go out and get mum and dad to gift you money seems…