GUEST BLOG: Bryan Bruce – Tax the Ghost home!
What’s on my mind asks Facebook?
OK..2 things.
A shortage of building materials means there will be a shortage of housing for a lot longer now.
That means house prices and rents will continue to go up.
So… what to do to increase supply?
One partial answer – Tax the Ghost homes.
A small but helpful thing would be to make it financial folly to own an empty house for over a year.( A so -called ‘ghost’ home.)
According to the 2018 Census, there are approximately 40,000 empty private homes in Auckland.
That is 7.3 percent of the total, up from 6.6 percent in the previous Census in 2013.
And Auckland is not the only place in Aotearoa with vacant homes at a time when accommodation is expensive and in short supply.
There are ghost homes in other cities, in towns and in rural areas.
Now, I understand that an owner might have a legitimate reason for temporarily owning an empty home – but 2 of them? 3,4,5,6,7 of them ?
A significant number are empty simply because the owners are focused on capital gains.
In this regard the government has made a move in the right direction by extending the brightline test but I’d also put a super tax on ghost homes to make it more viable for the owner to either sell the property or rent it out rather than land bank it.
If local councils were made responsible for collecting the super tax ( let’s say 10% of the properties GV each year) and were require to spend that money on new rental housing , that would also help a bit with housing folk who cannot afford to buy a place of their own.
This ‘ghost home’ problem is not of course unique to NZ so we could certainly look overseas for some inspiration.
For example, the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership was set up in 2010 and aims to bring the country’s 40,000 privately-owned, long-term empty homes back into use. The partnership is funded by the Government and encourages each of Scotland’s 32 local authorities to have a dedicated Empty Homes Officer. There are currently 24 officers who work to bring vacant homes back into use by providing advice and information, and encouraging social landlords, community groups and private bodies to engage in empty homes work.
Around 100 empty properties a month are being returned to occupation across Scotland.
Bryan Bruce is one of NZs most respected documentary makers and public intellectuals who has tirelessly exposed NZs neoliberal economic settings as the main cause for social issues.
Yes, Bryan, decisive action of the kind you suggest is possible.
However, were governed by an incompetent coward with a lot to say -but little of it making much sense, but now we are governed by an incompetent coward with nothing much to say at all.
Nevertheless, she is still quite popular because most people are grossly uninformed/misinformed.
100% Bryan.
It’s an accepted fact that there are many thousands of homes around NZ that are deliberately left vacant long term by their owners. Any person who does this why there is record homelessness in NZ is the epitome of a greedy selfish git. They need to be rooted out and a meaningful consequence served up to them on behalf of all decent Kiwis by the taxman. I was genuinely shocked this was not addressed by the Government in the recent announcements to made inroads with the housing crisis. It’s my contention that a high percentage of these homes are owned offshore by the usual suspects. With those “investors” not having an NZ IRD number, taxing them is not so straightforward. Time for some retrospective laws to be introduced in this area. That will require stepping on powerful and wealthy toes who will not stop bleating should it occur.
Exactly the same situation and dynamic is present with land bankers around NZ. With home building land at a premium, how is land banking accepted during a housing crisis and while record homelessness rage on? A machine feeding and encouraging selfish greed. Well past time to disincentivize this morally corrupt business practice.
“With those “investors” not having an NZ IRD number, taxing them is not so straightforward.”
I beg to differ. These offshore empty homeowners are all presumably paying rates, so collecting extra money from them shouldn’t be a problem. And as this issue seems to be most concentrated in Auckland, make the empty homes tax, or levy, a regional scheme administered by district councils, just like the current fuel tax. As we all know, collecting increased revenue in the form of rates is the sole function Auckland City Council actually excels at.
10% of GV as a tax is a JOKE. If someone can afford to leave a place vacant, for whatever reason, a piddly 10% is NOT going to have an impact.
Maybe 50%, with Govt/council rights to take possession significantly quicker than usual should the owner ‘not be found’ or they just ignore ‘the tax’, would have a REAL effect, i.e NOT a Claytons law, which in today environment might be better called a JacindaBlair law
….i.e. one that has NO intention or desire to do what it looks like it does ‘at face value’.
This could be her legacy. The Jacinda law !!!…fiddling while New Zealand burns.
p.s. I am a left winger and would vote for Bombers Aotearoa Pa party if it ever gets set up.
There is a long history of land occupations in this country, from Parihaka to Ihumātao by way of Bastion Point and Pākaitore/Moutoa Gardens, among others no doubt. So, what will be the government’s response if protesters decide to occupy a few ghost houses? It’s the sort of thing that followers of Martin Luther King might have done in a similar situation, not to mention Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers. With such abundant precedents, this seems like something that’s bound to to happen if things just carry on as they are. Yet at the same time it would raise the nation’s temperature to boiling point because private property rather than public lands would be under occupation for the first time.
No, it would not be the first time private property was occupied – Maori land was illegally taken which is why we have ongoing disputes.
What you suggest is that more people experience the same upheaval, mostly wealthy and white this time around. Let’s find a fairer method that avoids a build up of resentment
Thay are just sinks of greed and they must be either heavily taxed or confiscated and demolished to make room for several affordable homes.
Yes
Allow squatters right, as the UK had in the 1990’s (the last time I lived there, and I assume still exists). That would frighten away the off shore empty house owners, and make more housing available.
I seriously don’t understand why you think government are going to help you or get you into your own home. They’re taxing the shit out of everyone. Doesn’t matter if you have money or not. You should be focused on your own life and getting better at what you do, work even harder to get more of a down payment for a house. If your not making positive steps in that direction, your missing out as the govt are printing money like crazy!! You will be priced out of everything. Any money you have now will be worth less next year etc. so hedge your bets and invest in either stocks or crypto if you can’t buy a property. At least your money will go up with inflation. Instead of being worth less every year in the bank. The politicians are f ing all you people who say they need to do xyz. Stop focusing on that shit. They have an agenda and it doesn’t involve you and your crying.
Anyway good luck to the 1 person that takes this advice and finally figures out that the govt are a cancerous leech sucking the life out of everyone. Them and the banks are the ones that started all the BS with inflation etc. all the parties are the same!!
Bye
The government made you rich you idiot. You are not a Warren Buffet. After COVID, if the government hadn’t stepped in and saved all you scumlords arses by dropping interest rates, removing LVR’s and printing money your house would have dropped 50%. THE GOVERNMENT DID THAT.
I really like the Scottish example. We could do that without a tax. If we got 100 homes a year it would be a good start.
Heard Ashley Church on Magic talkback radio this morning and he was toeing the Tory line. He talked about investors and not about speculators and that they are good business models. So did the other tories on the show. He believes that being able to put a deposit down was the solution to the housing crises or interest only mortgages/loans. I am shocked that believes that house prices will increase substantially in the next year or so. He did not explain why house prices in NZ were some of the highest in the world. Funny that the radio program then discussed the increase in min wage and the business commentators expressed the evil work of Labour and paying workers a minimum wage.