Clearly the pro tenant group has better resources and a louder voice than the first home buyers (working man in the street). Even our industry consisting primarily of residential properties with a $9 billion stake is only represented by unpaid volunteers. The pro public sector housing lobby groups amounting to less than 20% of the market has Government funded lobbyists to push their cause?
On Nick Smith’s watch we are seeing billions poured into public housing and generous subsidies and special consideration to self-appointed operators of “social housing”. He is pushing through a special set of legislation that will give their tenants four times the rent subsidy that our private sector tenants can get. Unfortunately it is likely that the privately operated social housing groups will suddenly find their properties will begin to be treated like HNZ properties are. There is a clear consistent linkage between below market rent and poor treatment of houses.
Yet we the providers of the full range of housing to the vast bulk of society are threatened with a variety of penalties and economic sabotage. Before they introduce the new regulations to try and put us out of business with things like BWOF’s and extra taxes Nick is scurrying around to provide HNZ homes with some of the basic features that most private landlords are already supply as a matter of course. Things like drapes, good fencing for tenants with young families, smoke alarms, and protection from troublesome neighbouring tenants. I wonder when they will provide garages, landscaping trees and burglar alarms.
Yet despite my pessimistic comments this week I was encouraged by one of Nick’s responses to a fully funded sociologist who got stuck into him again. I have been lamenting that he does not seem to be listening to us. Well he responded with a comment from my last newsletter re the Income Related Subsidy that HNZ currently gets and which will soon be extended to anyone who sets themselves up as a social housing provider. So perhaps there is hope that someone is listening. The problem is at the moment they are just ignoring us.
I wonder which is worse.
To not be listened to, or to be ignored after being listened to.
New Zealand Landlords are not the only ones being hammered
I have attached an article from USA concerning one community’s final solution to problem citizens. Someone there has figured that most of the problem people are tenants. So they have come up with a cunning plan. They have moved to stop people letting their properties in certain areas. Those tenant free areas can be initiated by owners. I wonder what they will do when the children of an owner occupier commits a crime. Perhaps they will force the owner to sell. Of course nothing like that would happen in New Zealand. Well it couldn’t could it? If not then why are there already different national and local taxes for rentals versus owner occupied dwellings? Why is the Government proposing to have a lower standard of building facilities for owner occupied dwellings than rentals? Once Nick’s new left wing red tape is in place how long will it be before you cannot get permission to let your own property to say your children or your friends or whoever? From time to time I get complaints to me as property manager about my tenants. Sometimes that relates to noise but often it relates to how tenants treat their partners and children, vehicle infringements, and even complaints about work ethics. A few weeks ago the police rang to say a man had called in to the station to say he was going to chop down a fence. The police said because it was a rental they could not record his name, nor address of the crime. The comment was because the fence was part of a rental the crime was considered a civil matter that the police had no interest in. What’s more, the lady in blue thought that I would instantly know which of the hundreds of properties I manage the threat related to. That’s right folks stupidity and bigotry is not restricted to Homer Simpson and Harvard. New Zealand and Nelson has its own red necked idiots who hate rentals and the landlords that go with them.
Glenn Morris is the owner of Nelson property management company, “Glenn’s Vacancies”, managing residential and commercial investments. He is the current secretary of the Nelson Property Investors Association. He was active in the review of the RTA and is a well-known figure in the property investment community. He has a reputation for effectively managing difficult tenancies.”
