Q&A Review: The Housing Debate
It’s a Housing Debate between Amy Adams and Phil Twyford.
They were asked what’s ‘affordable’. Amy gives some bullshit answer, Phil gives the explicit costs break down and notes housing prices are now 10 times higher than wages allow for. Amy dares to claim the low interest rates somehow makes that all ok – as if the mass printing of currency around the plant as a response to the GFC is somehow Nationals doing. Phil points out the numbers of home ownership has fallen.
Amy is a drowning strawman clutching camels.
Q&A have a poll saying majority of NZers agree with Labour and want the Government to build affordable houses.
Labour will build 100 000 affordable houses for first time buyers with 50 000 in Auckland.
National will build 34 000 homes in 10 years with only 6800 being affordable houses.
For National, they want the market to sort it out and they desperately need the inflated property bubble to keep the economy looking like it’s growing.
Amy Adams is being disingenuous in the extreme and won’t even agree on basic facts because the basic facts are so damaging to National’s housing policy.
Panel is Dr Raymond Miller, Max Harris, Fran O’Sullivan and John Tamihere.
Ray gives it to Phil, he points out that National are in deep trouble when it comes to housing.
Fran gave it to Phil as well, but she wants more policy detail.
Max gave it to Phil, pointed out interest rate argument by Amy Adams is just nonsense.
John gave it to Phil as well, points out that the majority can’t get a home and that Phil is providing that majority a political solution.
Panel points out we have a national crisis when it comes to housing and that the debate is too narrow. and that voters need more information on renter rights, foreign investors and the impact of immigration. The panel had more ideas and solutions on housing than National have managed in 9 years.
A focus on Shane Jones taking on Shane Reti in Whangarei. If NZ First is going to have a high tide of support, it’ll happen in Whangarei with Shane Jones.
The TVNZ Poll suggest Jones has a hell of a way to go.
Shane Reti – 42%
Shane Jones – 24%
What is incredible is National on 41% Party vote but the Labour Party vote was 37%!!! That’s fucking extraordinary in a die hard electorate like Whangarei! If anything like this happens in other electorates, Labour will be in the mid 40s come election day.
Incredible result for Labour. National should be bloody nervous.
I don think that yesteryear´s high interest rates are entirely irrelevant. It may be be much of a muchness whether one has high rates and low prices, or vice versa. However the former would have benefited those able to buy without borrowing, and possibly those who bought when rates were high, but who are able to take advantage of the lower rates of more recent times.
Kiwibuild has always been widely welcomed, hence it gives Labour strength on this front. Where they fall short, however, is social housing.
The panellists are worth listening to.
Right-wing commentator, Fran O’Sullivan all but confirmed that the neo-liberal paradigm is a failure. She seemed to advocate seizing land from land-bankers and lamented the fact that the wealthy were buying up houses for investment, both here and overseas.
Ms O’Sullivan may be experiencing a somewhat late Road To Damascus revelation?
Singapore sells property minus land value so that every one starts with chips on the table, that would destroy land banking. How to get NZ back there after a hundreds years of colonisation is a difficult proposition. A question for the philosophers perhaps.
Getting back there would require dismantling Iwi’s first right of refusal (ridiculous notion to begin with) RMA, so on and so forth. Lengthy that. But not if regional developments are sold minus land costs so that city slickers have away of trading out of the Auckland housing market uniformly and that’s simple credit guidance that says you can speculate on asset prices just not with the entire New Zealand economy.
[Singapore sells property minus land value so that every one starts with chips on the table,]
How does that work? Would not land values simply transfer to the improvements.
https://www.iras.gov.sg/IRASHome/uploadedFiles/IRASHome/e-Tax_Guides/etaxguide_GST_GST%20General%20Guide%20for%20Businesses_2014-10-08.pdf
First off I hold zero certificats around real estate or taxations and no one should seek financial advice via anonymous avatars on the Internet because more times than not, those giving advice over the Internet either don’t know local regulations, regulators or resources involved e.g. building plans differ greatly between New Zealand and the Deserts of the Middle East so cation applies. That said.
Gains from the sale of real property in Singapore (as unposed to real estate in New Zealand) sold with in 3 years from the purchase date are subject to tax. You’re probably asking what real property is by now.
Real property includes any land and buildings and any interest, options or other right over such land or building. To determine ‘gains’ from the sale of property. Investors use this formula – gains = sale price minus purchase price minus allowable expenses.
Allowable expenses include:
– Stamp duty (on purchase and sale)
– Legal fees (on purchase or sale)
– Costs incurred to enhance the value of the property (e.g. renovation costs)
– Agents commission (to find seller / buyer)
– Mortgage interest
– Repair and maintenance costs
– Property tax
– Insurance premiumsThese
* these expenses are allowed as deductions if the property was vacant during the period of ownership
If the property is sold below market value, the market value will be deemed to be the sale price as at the date of sale. Joint owners or tenants calculate gains to be shared by joint owners in equal shares. And then gains are shared with tenants based on there respective share or rent paid into real property.
So I’v left a link above, it’s the SG-Tax Guide available online for you to look over if you choose to and generate your own opinion, or even seek your own advice. But note those people tend to be expensive. How ever Gareth Morgan is one such expert and he may have looked through the way the Singapore property market works when formulating TOP Fair Tax policy viewable to the New Zealand public free. Available in PDF here: https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/garethmorgan/pages/95/attachments/original/1500500235/01237_TOP_Policy_1_-_Tax_description.pdf?1500500235
Interestingly TOP fair tax policy notes:
Copy & past; we (‘TOP’) suggest we close the loophole immediately but subject to:
* stepping the required minimum taxable earnings rate up over a few years so asset owners have time to adjust;
* allow home owners over 65 to pay the tax via a mortgage to the IRD, payable on change of ownership, hence avoiding any cash ow issues;
* allow those businesses facing a temporary or cyclical earnings downturn to defer their minimum income tax for a period of up this to 3 years (use of money interest to be charged); and
* follow the lead of Britain and Australia and unilaterally deal to the tax avoidance by foreign corporations immediately; we’ll provide more detail on this aspect of the policy in the lead up to Christmas.
No mater what tribe you are in. You will learn more about the New Zealand economy from Gareth Morgan’s free information than you will studying an economics degree at any one of New Zealand’s universities. And TOP policy will be freely available for any establishment party sane enough to pick them up.
Couldn’t resist putting a plug in for TOP. Suspect somewhere in New Zealand some one just got triggered. Gender not assumed of course.
Amy Adams. On housing. Lots of experience as a property investor. Dirty rivers in Selwyn.
So for those who do not find $500,000 to $600,000 ‘affordable’, yet are never going to get within cooee of a State house any time soon??
Tough titty as they say?
Unfortunately I suspect that they are a large and growing section of society and no doubt explains the ever increasing numbers of non voters.
These are people expected to vote so a small group of workers can get a house, and some homeless folk can get a State house, and meantime what do they get?? A minimum wage increase that goes straight to the landlord.
And the thing we can all worry about, is after a life time of housing insecurity, what happens when those under stress renters get sick or retire??
This housing issue is costing the tax payer and the country…and the bill is only going to get bigger, all for the sake of a ponzi scheme bubble…
Re Phil, I do not quite trust the man, while I trust Amy Adams and National even less. When you have friend like these, one has to be somewhat skeptical about what Labour will present us if in government:
‘Opinion: Planning rules the cause of housing crisis’
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11553128
The NZ Initiative praising Twyford even got Kiwiblog excited, it seems:
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2017/03/nz_initiative_praises_twyford_policy.html
And construction companies are already reaching their limits to deliver:
http://www.noted.co.nz/money/economy/house-arrest-will-new-zealand-face-a-construction-bust-before-a-housing-bust/
So I have little hope for that much affordable housing to come to us any time soon. NZers will in ever higher numbers be renters, for decades to come.
To change things much bolder steps need to be taken, than what even Labour propose.