Corporate landlords vs Boomer landlords – the dilemma for renters

By
Martyn Bradbury
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46
1453

More rent controls needed on top of immediate freeze, Greens co-leader Marama Davidson says

The Greens are backing the introduction of a rent freeze after the Human Rights Commission called on the Government to take urgent action to address housing affordability for Kiwis on low incomes.

Renters are caught between Corporate landlords and the Boomer landlords.

When corporate landlords were first mooted with their buy to rent tax loopholes, I spat naked venom at the idea, but the more I’ve considered it in light of the horror of the boomer landlords…

Max Rashbrooke: Terrible landlords aren’t ‘bad apples’ – they’re endemic

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Property investors would have you believe the landlords of such places are a few bad apples. But every reputable survey reveals a garbage dump of ghastly flats.

A few years back, building researchers BRANZ uncovered damp in one-third of rentals and mould in half of them. An Otago University trial found one in two would fail a basic warrant of fitness.

More recently, a 2020 stocktake by Stats NZ showed one in three rentals had large gaps around windows and doors, more than one-third were always or often cold, and nearly half were mouldy. One in two required moderate or major repairs. Similarly, a Habitat for Humanity survey this year found many rentals needing repairs either internally (38%) or externally (42%).

In short, somewhere between 30% and 50% of our 600,000 rentals – that’s 200,000 to 300,000 dwellings – are in terrible condition.

…I’ve come to realise that the so called checks and balances from the State to protect renters simply don’t exist…

The bad news is that, to investigate 200,000-300,000 terrible rentals, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) has employed a frontline inspectorate numbering … 37. Each inspector will have to check somewhere between 5000 and 8000 rentals.

…if selfish boomer landlords make renters lives hell and the State won’t bother investigating them, maybe corporate landlords can provide better rental tenancies WHILE strangling off boomer landlord control over the rental market.

Large institutional investors are looking for corporate landlords who can provide regular returns of around 4%, something easily achieved with long term stable rental tenancies.

Corporate landlords would be extremely beneficial to renters long term stability and price controls but the question would be why allow a whole new industry to develop monopoly rentals for basic social service provision like housing.

Why not set up a State/Council owned version of this who build and own these ourselves?

We need to investigate any system that robs boomer landlords of their privilege while providing long term solutions to renters well being.

Imagine the price fall of house if corporate landlords were able to offer far better tenancies than boomer landlords?

Just think if that river of gold the boomer landlords have been drinking so greedily from turned off and renters got better conditions instead?

 

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46 COMMENTS

  2. I also think corporates are the answer, can we centralise it too and have as many management layers as possible like Grenfeld? Sarc.

  3. • Rent Freeze now!
    • Rent Control now!
    • Occupy empty residential & commercial properties on an organised basis to get politicians attention
    • State House mega build from flat packs, low rise apartment mega build, transferable & life time tenancies, use golf courses and horse race tracks for builds, and “forgotten” smaller LINZ jurisdiction land parcels
    • Retire all WINZ/MSD emergency housing related debt
    • CAPITAL GAINS TAX!–are you listening politicians–revisit this

    Some professional landlords are ok in my experience, they are in it for the long haul and know very well buildings need cleaning and refurbishment after tenancies. People have transient, messy lives sometimes, and paying some smug bastard’s mortgage off for them is never going to generate much love for landlords.

    Boomer and also younger gen “on the property ladder” landlords take wear and tear or damage as some sort of personal affront, and expect people that can barely afford their exploitative rents for dumps to be grateful!

    Tenants rights groups interviews and surveys show many tenants are scared to raise repairs and maintenance because they know the likely result. Are there good landlords out there? I have known a couple, but don’t feel like giving poor widdle landylords any reassurance or encouragement frankly. Rental Housing should largely be local authority or central Govt. business.

    • Except unless we go full Soviet Union style State provided and controlled housing – essentially requiring an autocratic single party communist state – your plan would ultimately (not immediately) result in an even worse housing crisis since private and corporate landlords would disappear – not everyone wants or can afford to own their own homes under our current ,agreed (democratic), political and economic system.

      So your proposed solutions must be embedded in a wider discussion about what sort of socio-political and democratic system we want to live in (Mr Bradbury’s intention I believe) – A Soviet Style system (single party with complete State control (a state provided apartment for all) or a liberal Western style democratic system – there are unfortunately no inbetweens as Venezuela, the most poverty stricken state in Latin America, has demonstrated.

      Mr Bradbury, of course, would choose the former and invokes housing and other social issues as social proof that our current liberal democracy is not fit for purpose with an eye on reducing the “decision fatigue” (in a democracy) of moving from the latter to full socialisation of incomes, goods, services.

      I’m happy to engage in that discussion.

  4. Corporate landlords seem a better fit than ma and pa investors because they are more likely to have the money and will to fix up any problems . At one stage I owned 2 rentals in a block of flats that were all rentals owned by private owners and when it came to fixing problems many did not have the money to do the repairs quickly.
    The state needs to have homes for those in need as often those people need other help so it be good to have a safety blanket that problems are quickly picked up eg whr the rent is not paid to find out why.

  5. NZ Herald: (representative of many such situations throughout NZ)

    A terrified elderly couple say they were forced to cower inside their home after their abusive Kāinga Ora neighbours held a Black Power party at which a police officer was allegedly assaulted and a reveller tried to steal a patrol car.

    As the party kicked off on Saturday night, police advised the Whangārei couple to stay inside their neighbouring Kāinga Ora property for their own safety.

    Patched gang members boozed from hours of drinking allegedly crashed a car outside the property and urinated in their shared driveway while shouting obscenities as officers dealt with the disorder.

    I assume you are advocating for an expansion in Kainga Ora (no eviction) housing, largely acknowledged, as the worst landlord in NZ?

  8. Shame or full, a capitalist quasi socialist, better known as a state capitalist control, without no controlling the reins, is our present coalition control. Understand them passing laws for the would be protection of renters, who by the sound of it is only applied to multiple block owners of a hundred or more rentals, and the shock, the farm fence past friendly allowed this to be, and yet a ten year lease is set in stone for future renters, even for those deluded who with a minim 200,000, deposit, that in no they will be able to service in five to ten years from now let alone 25 to 30 years. So tenent!s who can afford rent and even above minimum wage workers, still require social assistance to pay the rent.
    My lad his friends three, got this one bedroom flat at todays rate of $280 PER WEEK, IN THIS OLD LARGE old homestead that had been moved into a block of land and split into six flats, who owned this slum, and this slum today would not be outside Gorbals Glasgow, in the sixties when those slums got really out there uninhabital, this is capitalist exploit of the extreme, and this quasi government are sub-ing these on and off shore landlord exploiters

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