It’s now no-cause eviction open season on Renters as National reopen country up to digital nomad hyper tourism
The war on Renters continues as no-cause evictions declare open season on Renters…
No-cause evictions return, landlords warned against misuse
No-cause evictions are back from today – and landlords are being told not to see it as “carte blanche to end tenancies at will”.
Amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act passed last year and brought a number of changes.
While the changes to bond lodgements, no longer requiring signatures for lodging or topping up a bond, took effect immediately, others are still being rolled out.
From January 30, landlords can end a periodic tenancy without a specific reason if they give 90 days’ notice.
…this while National open country up to digital nomad hyper tourism…
Thousands eye NZ’s digi-nomad scheme, MPs challenge the policy
More than 8000 people looked at Immigration New Zealand’s webpage on working remotely yesterday – and 1500 more viewed its visitor visa and visa-waiver pages.
MPs today quizzed officials on issues they fear will dog the digital nomad visa, including skyrocketing demand for temporary housing – or travellers taking local jobs.
The visa policy change means all overseas visitors, including tourists on visa waiver (ETAs), can now work here for up to nine months.
A parliamentary scrutiny committee examined the change with INZ staff and immigration minister Erica Stanford. She told the education and workforce committee it had attracted a massive amount of interest and coverage since Monday.
“We have been missing out on a whole market of people that other countries are taking advantage of, which we have not been able to do, and it was great yesterday and the day before to see the digital nomad headlines for New Zealand on the BBC and on the New York Times. I mean that is absolutely phenomenal.”
But opposition MPs questioned Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment officials earlier in the day about potential unintended consequences of the policy.
“Did you check with overseas examples or with other government agencies around the risk of the proliferation of things like Airbnb in communities where perhaps these so-called digital nomads would be concentrated?”, asked Greens MP Ricardo Menéndez March about the potential for pressure on rentals and temporary housing.
…so total acquiescence to the Landlord Class alongside a $2.9billion tax loop hole WHILE National open the floodgates to Digital Nomads who will spike the rents up.
New Zealand rentals are already globally high…
New Zealand among the most expensive places to rent in the world
As rents have pushed up in recent years on the back of high migration, New Zealand’s rental market has achieved a record that tenants would rather not set, and global distinction the country would probably prefer not to achieve.
Kelvin Davidson, chief economist at property research firm Corelogic, said average rent as a share of average household income had reached a record high of 22%.
But he said that could conceal the full extent of the impact on tenants.
“The average renter might be paying the average rent, but they might not have the average income, so for them rent will be absorbing a much higher share of their budgets.
“The 22% is not the most important point. Whatever it is, It’s at a record high. Renting is very expensive.”
Meanwhile, an OECD report released in April said that New Zealand was among the most expensive places to rent in the world, on a number of measures.
More than 25% of disposable income was going on rent for renting households, it calculated, ninth in the world.
The country was one of only eight in which median housing costs used up more than 40% of disposable income for the lowest-income tenants.
New Zealand also had a big difference by international standards in the housing cost burden for the lowest-income tenants versus higher-income earners.
“In Colombia, Chile, Finland, Israel, New Zealand, more than half of tenants in the private rental market are overburdened by housing costs. By contrast, in many Central and Eastern European countries, less than 20% of tenants are overburdened by housing costs,” the OECD report said.
This is literally a Government of Landlords, for Landlords in the interests of Landlords.
Real Estate Pimps donated millions to National and in return National have reopened tax loopholes and have given landlords the right to kick tenants for no reason.
There is a class war on renters but we don’t have the political vocabulary to articulate it.
Let’s remind ourselves just how vested the Landlord class is..
…there is an unspoken promise between the neoliberal State and the untaxed capital gains private landlord class that the neoliberal State never builds enough State Houses to alleviate housing desperation so that the untaxed capital gains private landlord class can exploit that housing desperation ON TOP OF getting a $1.5Billion annual subsidy in the form of the Accommodation Allowance EVERY SINGLE YEAR!
We are not interested in solutions to poverty and inequality, we only believe in making any welfare as difficult and toxic as possible so the poor give up turning to the State in the first place.
We have short changed our own people in terms of housing and safety nets so we can feel superior and smug in the tiny lounge rooms of our lonely bitterness on these shaky isles.
We would prefer harm to our fellow citizen just in case we don’t get something they might.
30 years of downward deunionised wage pressure has created a working people who are so poorly paid they look at welfare with envy.
Meanwhile the megalandlords and property speculators laugh all the way to the bank as homeownership continues to fall.
I clearly must be missing something because how would we know if some tourist here, on a tourist visa, wasn’t working remotely?
Exactly only gotta look at all these tik tok , Instagram and only fans influencers making millions a year while touring on those earnings.
Indeed. Appears this was also asked of officials proposing the scheme.
We would prefer harm to our fellow citizen just in case we don’t get something they might.
30 years of downward deunionised wage pressure has created a working people who are so poorly paid they look at welfare with envy.
Meanwhile the megalandlords and property speculators laugh all the way to the bank as homeownership continues to fall.
Well said Martyn.
The landlords: the parasites that infect NZ society. Given the housing market in Nz is ideally set up for a parasitic host the characterization is not far from the mark but I’d feel better if the term came with nuances. Who are these parasitic landlords that we should target our anger and disgust. All landlords? Savvy investors with a few properties in their portfolio? Fat cats with hundreds if not thousands? Corporate bodies? Mums and dads with a retirement plan? It’s now old hat to say NZ has a housing market with bits of an economy tacked on, but it’s just this that turns good meaning folk into parasites.
The tech nomads are on a roll around the world, both enabled and destabilised by the tech and its unattachment to real human need and enterprise. They virtually originated from Silicon Valley, which is their motherland. Here’s some facts to help understand the pheno-men-on of the moving cavalcade flowing around and over us.
Silicones are “slippery” by nature. This is due to the particular structure of the siloxane polymer, characterised by wide bond angles between silicon and oxygen that determine one of the main properties of the lubricating grease in which it is contained: the static and dynamic coefficient of friction content.19 Jan 2023
6 unrivaled properties of a silicone grease – Macon Research
Macon Research https://www.maconresearch.com
(These facts inform and show science working for You!)
So the law has moved back to what it was pre-Covid. Hardly a war against renters.
It’s always someone else’s fault in lefty land.
This is terrible news for renters. Elsewhere digital nomad tourists have caused rents to skyrocket, pricing local renters out of the market and out of their homes.
Off the top of my head I think Spain is now rethinking this “ tourist “ service, which has also resulted in over-tourism impacting on local facilities, and if these temporary residents are allowed to vote, the outlook is decidedly bleak, and a further erosion of New Zealand’s democracy and perhaps autonomy.
The question which should be asked, is in whose interests is the government now acting ?
Well, that’s not a bad question. But there are multiples answers.
The government is working for the people, full stop. Find ways to benefit the economy so we all (presumably) can benefit. Afterall, as a nation we have ‘expectations’, yes?
The government is working for the people and groups that put them in power. Self interest, full stop. There’s quite of bit that in democratically elected governments and surely its not hard to see in the current government (although under MMP a troublesome coalition) – indeed in all governments, irrespective of their hue.
Looking at from another angle, tempting digital nomads here is simply the bait on the hook, no different to the work-to-resident schemes but configured for the digital age. Without knowing the details of the initiative, some might actually like the place and decide to physically stay, put down roots, raise bambinos (ooops… no Mexicans allowed!). Win win. The country needs clever, educated, innovative people – and their (future) kids. If only to grow the super fund! Bleeding so many to Australia and beyond. But of course, no guarantee newcomers won’t bugger off as soon as they can. Its their pejorative. Part of the global world we now live in.
Oh … then there’s the unintended consequences, what MB is getting at (or they they simply intended consequences to feather the nest of landlords)