Hey NZ Government – quick question – why the increase in foreign ownership of NZ?

1. Don’t forget that Singapore and OZ investors are exempt from being considered foreign investors for existing property (something that Deborah Russell seems be be misleading people on when she says “only people who are resident here can purchase houses”.)
   https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/110448233/why-families-earning-100000-still-struggle

   She left out the Singapore and OZ investors can buy any property in NZ, people on a study visa or work visa in NZ, or that any investor in the world can buy new property, also don’t forget you can achieve permanent residency and citizenship very easily here and then call yourself a Kiwi and buy assets as a Kiwi before leaving the country like the Kiwi’s do… when you have a problem, the mantra seems to be, make it worse in NZ!

   Heads up, maybe instead of spending $500k – $650 on unaffordable houses for the Kiwibuild, they should do what the Singapore investors are doing and buying up Levin property which is only 1 hour from Wellington and only $250k for a 2 bedroom and $350k for a 3 bedroom). Apparently 16 already sold to the same Singaporean investor in Levin….

   HNZ & Kiwibuild* bosses, beat the overseas investors and actually have some houses to show for Kiwibuild and the poor by buying the cheapest houses and land around NZ like the Singapore investors.

   The cheapest housing is existing housing, cheaper than you can build it with all the construction rorts operating in NZ!!!!

   *Act before you are laughed out of town by giving away prime land swapped for a small amount of overpriced middle class apartments and terraces that some family with 4 kids in poverty might not find as appealing as a big fenced yard, lots of space and cheap rent and after a few “ASBOS, Anti-social behaviour order” incidents when the apartments might not be looking so rosy for the photo ops…

   • Maybe then Vanessa could get that permanent home and have her operation (see link below) aka if the government is prepared to buy existing cheap houses to rent out and beat the overseas investors which are ready and available NOW and cheap and suitable for families…

     https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/womans-surgery-delayed-because-she-doesnt-have-home-go-theres-nothing-you-can-do

     Also cheaper for tax payers than $1000 p/w motel rates!

     Seems to be a no brainer, so why are the government doing accounting financials to aid big firms and construction instead of readily available houses that are cheaper both for the tenant and the taxpayer and provides a better life for people in poverty???

2. You are not even counting the amount of exceptions to the OIA…

   ORIGINAL BILL
   – EXISTING HOUSES: Sales of existing houses limited to New Zealand citizens, Australians and people with a permanent resident visa who have lived in New Zealand for at least a year.

   – NEW PROPERTIES: Overseas investors required consent from the Overseas Investment Office and only if they increased the number of dwellings on the land, did not live in them and they on-sold them after it was completed.

   – HOTELS: Overseas investors needed approval by the Overseas Investment Office in order to buy any hotel unit if the land was categorised as residential or lifestyle.

   PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE BILL
   – EXISTING HOUSES: People allowed to buy existing houses will be expanded to include resident visa holders, such as people on a study visa or work visa, and Singaporeans but other overseas investors still banned.

   – NEW PROPERTIES: Overseas investors will be allowed to buy new apartments off the plan in developments of more than 20 units – up to 60 per cent of units in such developments can be owned by overseas investors – but they are still not allowed to live in them. The apartments may be kept by overseas owners as a rental, sold under a rent to buy scheme or as part of a shared-equity development.

   – HOTELS: Overseas investors will be allowed to own any number of units in a hotel with 20 or more units on condition they enter a lease-back arrangement with the hotel developer and not use the unit for their own use for more than 30 days a year.

   -UTILITY COMPANIES: Business supplying or transmitting electricity, gas and telecommunications will not be required to get consent from the Overseas Investment Office to buy residential land if it is being used for the purpose of providing the relevant service.

   https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12073898

   • +100 SAVENZ…well said….the Labour Party, NZF, Green coalition needs you as a policy maker

     I know of some people who had very young Singaporean wwoofers who wanted to stay for months, treat the experience as a hotel and then wanted to buy the property…this was their real reason for wwoofing

   • +100 SAVENZ…well said !

     The Labour , NZF, Green Coalition Government needs you as a policy maker

     • None of you lame arse’s get it do you? Plenty of good radical ideas around but the people with these ideas have to get into power, clear the decks & implement them!

       This won’t happen under our current business as usual political system. Nothing short of over throwing the liberal globalisation elite & a period of a period of dictatorial governance by those with a big picture grasp of reality will save us from our apocalyptic fate.

       I’m screaming at the conventional, box like walls in your minds here, useless I know, but when Venezuela like conditions finally arrive here the boxes will shatter & the shit will hit the fan.

3. Either we; put our obsession with progressive liberal democracy on hold & accept the fact that only an interventionist war footing national salvation government will bring about the urgent changes required to ensure the survival of our nation & people.

   Or we; get in behind a breakaway movement like mine & work towards setting up a resilient, sustainable autonomous homeland within NZ that will set the tone for a radically localised, post-globalisation world.

   Anything else will be a continuation of our weak-kneed, green washed, liberal PC business as usual death march. A cop out in other words.

4. Still waiting on the tough new rules for the Overseas Investment rubber stamp bureau.
   Still waiting on tough new rules for pillaging our water.
   Still waiting on shutting down low skilled worker imports.

   I’m sure in the Wellington bubble things are going swimmingly.

   • +100 KEEPCALMCARRYON

     ….the biggest threat to this coalition government is that they will be seen as more of the same as the last crooked government

5. “it’s almost as if the state apparatus just doesn’t care there’s been a change of Government”
   So it begs the question, who is really in control of the NZ Government?

6. Labour are loosing credibility here as they have no plans apparently to stop foreign takeovers of our land now.

   Sadly National kicked this increase off and Labour are simply following the same path.

   • Although to be fair NZ First made the most noise about that… now quiet…. Greens made noise but signed the water rights off and Labour seem to be taking all the wrong advice…from Kiwibuild to where the money should be going…

     They all talk about supply and demand for housing. Aka Kiwibuild will increase supply of houses, but then to make it work you have to stop the demand side too which nobody talks about which is driving the sky high prices from immigration and foreign investors, which is enormous demand and increasing under their watch… so Labour look very foolish..

7. Bomber.

   I was a New Zealand First member. The party has fallen a long way. Many great members and potential candidates have left because of its archaic governance, refusal to get into the 21st Century with election campaigning and a yawning divide between north and south.

   Sometimes I wonder if its just the nature of M.M.P. coalition governments to lose any bravery they might have acquired in opposition. Sometimes I wonder if its the effects of the neoliberal poison we have had to swallow that makes us think any other form of economics is bad.

   It is really sad in a way because New Zealand First actually have a fantastic set of principles, are capable of coming up with bold and original policy.

   Tragically the man who founded the party is not only its greatest asset, but also its biggest liability.

   • Robert, that was a sobering post from you. You should expand it and submit to Martin as a blogpost.

     The increasing sale of land to non-New Zealand citizens is a worrying trend and more so with NZF in government. I would have thought we’d see a reduction at the very least!! It was one of Winston Peters’ stand-out policies.

8. People don’t want and can’t afford the Kiwibuild houses, they can’t even pay the rents or afford food in about 40% of households. So many skilled workers have to leave the country for decent wages!!! Look at the wages for Kiwis for Pete’s sake, you now have to pay to work and 50% of our so called construction worker shortages are paid under $25 p/h while aged care workers are paid less than other nurses because they use foreign workers so can afford to pay less than market rates while braying they can’t get people.

   No point increasing housing supply with Kiwibuild then pushing in by a factor of 10+++ x the houses with hundreds of thousands of work permits and residencies per year… then lamenting high house prices and high rents…Doh!

   Only seven Wanaka KiwiBuild homes sell from ballot
   https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/108834461/only-seven-wanaka-kiwibuild-homes-sell-from-ballot

   Even when they manage to build them, nobody wants or can afford them for that price!

   Get rid of Kiwibuild and all the expenses that is creating and just buy cheap state rentals and manage them better and stop adding in more people into NZ who need housing!

   Not rocket science!

   • +100… to that SAVENZ

     …practicality seems to have flown out the window

     …the need is for State House Rentals for those homeless at the bottom of the heap…any house is better than no house

   • Various entities (the government included) seem blind to the fact that $650,000 is NOT affordable.
     Half of that amount is NOT affordable.
     One tenth of that amount IS affordable.
     A recent study shows that building materials in NZ are three times the price of the same products overseas. This is undoubtedly a major contributing factor to the high cost of building and something the government could remedy in very short order.
     We must remember that a house is nothing more than a box with four walls and a roof on a piece of dirt.
     It is not something that people should be shackled to for the rest of their life in order to pay it off (if they can even afford the deposit).
     I watched a program last night called ‘The £1 houses: Britain’s cheapest street’ where abandoned houses in a block (think Coronation Street) were offered up by the council to prospective purchasers for £1 on the condition they restored them and lived in them for 5 years minimum (no property developers allowed – must be owner-occupiers). Average cost to restore was in the £30,000 – 50,000 area which is ‘affordable’.
     If it can be done there, why not here?

9. Tinkering !!! is all you are going to get from this administration.
   If they were seriously going to act on the things we know need to be done it would have started by now.
   Vested interests and the neo lib enforcement agencies control this country.
   Just look at the disgusting state of affairs in the fishing industry.
   These people are above the law because of their influence and money and it goes right across the board and Key and his colleagues were just the public face of the tyranny they encouraged and prospered from.
   I have said it before and i will say it again New Zealand is not a democracy it is a one party state where we pretend we are patrons of human rights and freedom of speech until you show sympathy for real left wing opinions and ideas.
   I think the Green party has been given a nasty shock about the realities of government and how hard and futile it is to get real change.
   They may have their warrants and sit in cabinet but that is where it ends.

10. Not sure why we bothered having an election and a change of government to be honest. Sure the Prime Minister is a nicer person; but with stats like these what was the fucking point???!!!

    • @SIMONM, To be fair the coalition are better than the Natz, who would have already sold off Auckland, have most of Wellington gone by now, have about 50% of their MP’s paying to be on the MP list with the richest nationals getting first dibs and enriched their mates in the banking sector with social bonds by earning money from other’s misery…

      So the current government is not doing a great job because they are stupid and naive and fall to any number of lobbyists on a day to day basis, whereas the Natz had an far right wing agenda and where we are, is what nearly of Natz has created aka massive inequality and people paying to work and enriching the worst employers and middlemen.

      It is a pity Mana fell victim to dirty politics… they would have been a good counter weight. Could not see Harawira or Norman for that matter signing off that exported water deal no matter what their ‘advisors’ told them to do.

    • Representative Democracy is the democracy a nation has when they don’t have democracy. It is designed to keep the power out of the hands of the people.

      It’s still better to vote than not but we need a party that promises to mandate policy choices go to referendum and not be left to the politicians and lobbyists for Big Business.

11. Every day a step closer to No Zealand Wars II 😉

    • Castro, Try using your left hand now. Your right one must be getting tired.

12. …it’s almost as if the state apparatus just doesn’t care there’s been a change of Government.

    It doesn’t. After all, changing government doesn’t magically change the rules.

    And I haven’t seen this government doing anything about changing the rules and putting in place the necessary full ban on foreign ownership and investment.

    They still believe the dogma that we need foreign investment.

13. sam stubbs the founder of the none profit simplicity kiwi saver fund has pointed out that kiwisaver will be buying back new zealand this is 30 to 50 year money very stable money buying back our assets we will own the new zealand economy for better or worse don’t under estimate the power of kiwi saver imagine new zealand now if the Norman Kirk scheme hadn’t been stuffed up by national
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/107574408/kiwisaver-the-saviour-of-new-zealands-economy

    this should be the lead in the herald none profit passive index fund beats fancy expensive rip off off fund managers save your saving move
    Low fee Simplicity takes top spots for KiwiSaver returnshttp://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU1812/S00580/low-fee-simplicity-takes-top-spots-for-kiwisaver-returns.htm

Comments are closed.