Posts by BenWilson
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It's the obsession with being able to see the sea from the house that baffles me. The sea is an inhospitable place.
It's also very beautiful to look at. Tell me if it was a free choice between a property at the top of a hill commanding a 180 sweep of coastline, or the one just down the hill inland with only a view of the valley, or no view at all, that you would opt out of the big view, if it cost you nothing more to have it.
Agreed that I'd be more than happy to just be close to good access to the sea, but that's not the same as saying that it would have equal value to the place with similar access but a kick arse view.
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I can't buy into developers being bad guys. How else do properties ever get built? OK, some developers make nasty stuff, but all the good stuff is also made by developers, and it costs waaaay too much for me. Not because of the developers being wankers, but because what they have developed is valuable. They have added value to what they purchased.
Of course it is not a realistic dream to live on a quarter acre section 'whereever I want'. My own quarter acre is at least 2 suburbs further away from where I wanted it. But it is actually a nicer suburb than the one that I grew up in, when I was growing up there and forming my opinions about where I wanted to live. Of course that area has gentrified hugely, and you wouldn't recognize it from when I lived there. It has actually been improved enormously. And by the time I reach my parents age this area will be a whole lot more valuable too, and my kids won't be able to afford it.
That's the nature of capital - it grows in value if looked after.
Put even more bluntly, the entire CBD area could probably have been purchased in the bad old days for a cache of small arms. Of course it's worth many, many billions now, all thanks to those bastard developers, and we have a city to enjoy because of it, rather than a mangrove swamp. A lot of people think it's ugly, cheap, unplanned, slipshod etc. But there's no denying it's a lot more valuable than it was for all that bastardly development.
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Has anyone noticed the tucked away little par in the Herald about Labour going up in the polls and National down?
I struggled to find it in the online version. Do you mean the Roy Morgan poll referred to in the John Armstrong opinion piece?
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... and the swarming crowd of hideous real estate agents, who have a vested interest in pushing up house prices...
I used to believe that until I had one working for me. Then it became clear to me their modus operandi is to work hardest on lowering the seller's expectations, so as to make the sale. For them, missing the sale is missing the commission, a far bigger factor than missing a few extra percentage points on the commission.
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Classic, now her deputy campaign manager's fallen on his sword too. It's starting to look like a chessboard nearing the endgame.
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And credit to Mr Driver for building up the "everyone's leaving the country" bit then asking him "isn't that exactly what you did, with quite some personal success?". An obvious question that I haven't seen asked before and that Mr Key didn't have a solid response to.
Heh, it's a poser all right. On the one hand, Key could say that he also needed to leave to get ahead. On the other, why did he come back?
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As an alternative you could say somethimg like "no , the gaping' weeping,scabby holes in your face are not much of an incentive. "
I'm far too polite for that. My real solution is just to stop associating with them.
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Stephen, it's possible to have a disaster without villains.
I think a speculative bubble certainly has happened, but I also think the speculators are responsible and they are being punished. People who bought a house with the intention of living in it will not be affected.
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This summer I had a nostalgia inversion. I wandered around Herne Bay, where I lived for about 15 years, and realized it had actually got a lot better. Not that it was bad in the first place. One of my favorite childhood playgrounds was Wallace St beach. Now known (ironically to me) as Home Bay, I remember it clearly as a kid, wandering on the mud flats covered in broken bottles, and assorted junk, all alone. But last week when I went down there I was pleasantly surprised to find it transformed. The junk is all gone, a pleasant seating area has been built, the path down to it is no longer a broken neck waiting to happen, the pohutakawas have doubled in size, and there's a lot more sand. And most importantly I counted 80 people using it, sitting around in the sun, swimming, picnicking etc. All ages and demographics mingled unselfconsciously. I caught up with an old friend I hadn't seen for over a decade, while my son played with his grandparents and experimented with standing up. Life seemed good that day, a strange mix of past and future. You'd have missed that scene if you were touring the CBD wondering where all the culture was.
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Nonsense. That only applies if borrowing is unavailable to you, but available to everyone else.
No, it applies if you are trying to buy something really expensive, and can't afford it any other way.
I agree that lending is inflationary, and easy lending is particularly inflationary. It can't be any other way. But I don't think that makes it villainous. Every loan that every bank has ever given on a property has enabled someone to own a property. It was a 2-way deal. Only in the cases where the borrower clearly can't afford it could it be considered usurious. And in NZ in those cases it is almost always the case that the banks also lose. If they are villains, they are incredibly foolish ones.
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