Corporate landlords vs Boomer landlords – the dilemma for renters

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
46
1405

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

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%).

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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

    • The ideal would be for the state housing agency (currently branded Kainga Ora) to build 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 homes for secure, income-moderated lifetime rent by all who want them, and destroy mum-and-dad landlordery for ever.
      However, as neither Labour nor National will make that commitment (why would they, when so many MPs are landlords and property speculators?) the second-best option is the corporate build-to-rent arena, which promises to establish standards of tenancy security and inhabitability that will shine a searing spotlight on the Dickensian slumlords.
      We need compulsory warrants of fitness before any dwelling can be tenanted, and compulsory fit-and-proper-person licences before any person can put tenants in a dwelling they own or manage.

    • exactly – the more the woke have a brain fart idea that is touted by corporates as a wonderful way to go, the more homelessness and poverty continues, rent rises and shortages in weird places like Hawkes bay, and more professionals leave NZ who can’t get ahead on our low wages and enablement of crime and antisocial behaviour….

      The taxpayers are already subsidising development profits in many overt and covert ways, again leading to more professionals quitting NZ aka ripped off with sunset clauses, ripped off tradies who don’t get paid by our easy liquidations, higher rates for development infrastructure, leaky building, another rich lister development on cheap land popping up in the middle of nowhere and infrastructure paid for by taxpayers and ratepayers who are getting poorer.

      Meanwhile the worst examples of bad rentals and landlords are the government and council owned rentals, so the obvious first step to help vulnerable renters, should be to concentrate on woke government cleaning up their own rentals, get it right, and then roll out what works and is feasible.

      Woke and corporate led, gold plated, brand new, ensuited rentals for mega dollars doesn’t seem to be working at a price point for working class renters and as soon as the government make another brain fart, more of the old fashioned cheaper rentals are sold off, more antisocial tenants are tormenting more neighbours and taking out another new rental.

      Seriously very depressing that they can’t learn from their mistakes, and concentrate on government and council owned housing and stop NZ happily importing in so many dysfunctional people that other countries don’t want https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/former-australian-comancheros-bikie-boss-to-be-deported-to-new-zealand-after-appeal-fails/V4HAFYC4L4XRARAW5M7MPVWLTM/ which is not a good future for NZ.

    • Exactly!

      The left operates on feelings all while failing realise that every time they dabble in a market, they make matters worse.

    • The ignorance required to make that statement, let alone the lazy minded attitude it exudes is, while rather too familiar to my ears, an astounding piece of attempted sophistry that attempts to portray black as being white.. Apart from the obvious party political narrowmindedness it breathes, it bears no relationship with reality… Boomer landlords aren’t the ones building the vast majority of NZ’s houses, it’s the GOVERNMENT!!! Successive tory cabals have siphoned of over 100,000 of those houses built with taxpayers money, and given their sponsors huge windfall profiteering as a result of the artificially induced housing shortages created by throwing thousands of tenants out, and selling out to speculators… We don’t have a housing shortage, we have a responsible governance shortage.. The only way NZ will ever get at least some of it’s soul back, will be to stop putting the descendants of the original usurpers and exploiters back in power regularly, and keeping them there long enough to do irreparable damage.. As it stands, NZ is teetering on the edge of losing it’s sovereignty permanently, to either American corporate interests, or the same group with in China.. The only thing standing in the way of a complete capitulation is the current government… THIS is the legacy the thieving tories have left us… This comes with the honour of being the new owner of the worlds “dunce cap” as A large percentage of kiwis fail utterly to understand just how self defeating exploitation economics will always be… Or refuse to understand more likely….

      • Apologies for my “lazy-mindedness” Stefan – only it is pretty simple – create an environment where landlords no longer want to invest and you will, I can assure you, eventually have less houses and that leads to higher rents and more people living in cars. Not sure where you are going with your rant about “descendants of the original usurpers” – I am presuming you are talking about your descendants rather than mine. Mine helped build a great country.

        • Jason ‘I am presuming you are talking about your descendants rather than mine. Mine helped build a great country.’
          Virtue signaling and lack of historic content seem to be your weakest point when discussing housing unaffordability today.

  2. The Government needs to build more housing BUT have a two tier system of state housing
    1. One tier for families/elderly/refugees/invalids
    2. Two tier for professionals – Teachers, Accountants, Nurses, Firefighters…etc

  3. Ban private rental. Tax vacant properties. Put a renting license in place, requiring audited adherence to standards and practices – perhaps even cap profit, with overflow going into social housing. Make it easy to invest too – 4% return is so much better than the banks can provide on savings accounts, I’d happily take or compound $40/yr on the megare $1k I manage to keep in savings long term – for every thousand people that do the same there’s another house, the little people could contribute to and profit from housing too.

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

    • the problem at grenfell towers was a tory council that murdered it’s tenants by approving like good capitalists the cheapest most inflammable cladding they could…so not a good example snz

  6. • 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.

      • There is a huge homeless problem in Russia plus rampant poverty so why they get a mention here confounds me.
        As usual I speculate the self appointed experts on this site have never been to Russia or the former Soviet Union particularly the rural areas.
        Venezuela is an example of socialism at work.

  7. corporate landlords work (kinda) ok in europe because they are HEAVYLY regulated in good ‘old ream your fellow kiwi’ NZ it would be an unregulated race to the bottom, whether private or corporate landlords isn’t the issue it’s regulation that is actually applied and has teeth

    kyle maybe tenants should ask can you get your foot off my throat while you’re sucking my blood…

  8. 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.

    • landlords in your block trev, if they can’t afford repairs, then they’re a shithouse businessman, overstretched and undercapitalised(the bain of NZ small business’…we don’t let people abuse dogs because ‘they can’t afford it’ I think it’s minimum to treat our fellows as well as dogs.

      if landlords can’t afford standards they shouldn’t be in the game….simples

      and don’t give me ‘ma and pa’ that doesn’t absolve them.

      • Unfortunately until they do it having a rental seem like money for jam and you do not need to pass a test to get involved. The same can be said for dog owners who at Xmas time think a cute puppy would be great for the kids forgetting vet bills walks in the rain arranging care when on holiday etc.
        Corporates have a name to protect and hopefully this will make them better landlords

  9. 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?

  13. 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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