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IOS003A Intervention Required.
Sense Codes indicate the entire National Party requires a jammed paper (and bullshit artist) feed to be fixed, and ACT’s Brooke van Velden needs assistance. Maybe an Urlich or a Reweti-Peters could come to the rescue.
In the case of the latter the voices of Voyce may be able to help. In the case of the former, it’s more complex and may require the combined voices of a Finlayson, a McKinnon, a Spud Boldgering and one or two others. The longer it’s left to fester, the more the likelihood major surgery will be needed.
Kiddies are you sitting comfortably? Read and learn with Keith on why we are stuffed as far as housing goes – owning or renting. Sometimes I despair of this country and sometimes it nearly drives me to drink – our water is still good here thank goodness.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2403/S00017/empty-rentals-and-investor-friendly-taxes.htm
Empty Rentals And ‘Investor’-friendly Taxes
Keith Rankin Monday, 11 March 2024, 4:27 pm
Article: Keith Rankin
This morning on RNZ’s Morning Report, Revenue Minister Simon Watts admitted that it was a legitimate option for ‘landlords’ to leave their houses empty. (Refer Revenue Minister on mortgage tax deductions for landlords, RNZ 11 March 2024.) The official narrative of the elite political class is that when tenancies on rental properties end, the houses are retenanted or sold; sold either to an owner-occupier or to a landlord who lets the property to new tenants. They don’t usually admit to owning homes which are fully or substantially empty.
I might also mention that, in one of the leaders’ political debates before the 2023 election, both Chris Hipkins and Christopher Luxon were asked a question about whether they favoured a tax on owners of empty houses. Both leaders appeared discomforted, as if this was a naughty question that should not have been asked, and then recombobulated themselves by saying ‘no’; a response that was to be expected from Luxon, but which may have cost Hipkins a significant number of votes,
(In addition to not including such an obvious policy in the Labour manifesto, Hipkins’ cold rejection of an empty-house tax revealed that Luxon is not our only tone-deaf political leader.) Clearly neither leader had been briefed on the issue, despite such taxes being adopted overseas and despite the policy idea circulating widely in the New Zealand non-mainstream media….
It is worth reminding ourselves about maverick economist Gareth Morgan’s 2017 comments about residential landlords: see A hard look at Gareth Morgan’s plan to save New Zealand’s renters, Madeleine Holden, The Spinoff, 9 August 2017. Quote from Morgan: ‘”Look at me, I own six houses, ” he stated on The Nation. “I don’t have tenants; they just make carpets dirty. I do it because I know you [other investors] want to get in on this as well, and so you’re going to bid the price of those houses up.”‘…
The principle of financial leverage works like this. Mr S has a million dollars and wants to double his money in two years. He has been told by his financial adviser that residential property is appreciating in price by ten percent a year. Further a typical house costs one million dollars. Mr S buys five houses with his million dollars; that $200,000 per house of his own money. He borrows the remaining four million dollars. (He may then list his houses on Airbnb, as ‘short-term’ rentals; he may even let his properties to genuine tenants, or he may leave them empty.) In two years time he expects to sell all five houses for 1.2 million dollars; that’s six million dollars in total. After repaying his mortgages in full, he would get to keep two million dollars. That’s a doubling of his initial outlay of one million. (OK, there will be some expenses; nevertheless Mr S expects to be smiling all the way to the bank when he realises his near 100% capital gain over two years.
Mr S is an example of a leveraged landlord.