Financial adviser Mike Warrington is warning his clients that investment properties are no longer the great little earners they once were. What does this mean for renters? Rental property investment is progressively being defined by our regulators as a commercial activity and as a result, will be impacted more heavily by future costs. In due … Read more
Auckland Council has nitpicked its way into rejecting two high-density apartment developments on public transport routes near the CBD. Hayden Donnell asks whether council’s consents department really believes in the vision of the Unitary Plan. The Unitary Plan was supposed to fix things. When it passed in 2016, huge swathes of Auckland were rezoned for … Read more
A landlords’ spokesman’s claim that renters like paying letting fees shows how disgracefully lopsided our rental market has become, argues Madeleine Holden – and how desperately we need tenancy reform. Earlier this week, Stuff ran a story with a headline perfectly crafted to make millennials choke on their avocado toast: “Renters ‘like letting fees’, property … Read more
Ethan Donnell, director of Sick Homes, the latest in the Frame documentary series produced for the Spinoff by Wrestler and funded by NZ on Air, describes the people he met, and the reality of the places they live Once a week, Brett Johnson takes apart the small machine that pumps air through a mask and … Read more
The MP who rumbled property managers talking about the so-called ‘KFC test’ for tenants writes about why they need to be stopped. It is clear that most landlords and property managers are doing it right – they are providing an essential service for New Zealanders and are doing a good job, in a respectful and … Read more
Many of today’s concerns around home ownership and urban planning were found in centuries past, writes Jeremy Moyle Current anxieties about city planning and the possibility of home ownership can seem like particularly modern issues, but their origins are old – really old – and the concerns of 19th and early-20th century New Zealand sound … Read more
The off-site industry is full of great energy but in a mess, stumbling around looking for solutions, writes Dan Heyworth, CEO of Box, a company which has dipped its toe in the prefab business. Heralded as key to the government’s ability to build 100,000 homes over the next 10 years, prefab is hot right now. … Read more
Being a tenant in New Zealand is often a difficult and disempowering experience. Hayden Donnell looks into what’s broken in our rental housing market. The bad news is many of you will probably never own a home. Average property prices are 10 times the median household income of $92,843 in Auckland, while in New Zealand … Read more
To help end homelessness, we need to be the sort of people who are willing to get involved each other’s lives, writes Aaron Hendry. The closure of Tiny Deane’s night shelter in Rotorua highlights what’s lacking in much of the public discussion around ending homelessness: humanity. Homelessness is not simply a “problem we need to … Read more
Dr Lance O’Sullivan has issued a challenge to Phil Twyford after concluding state housing is a direct cause of kids becoming chronically ill. I recently moved from Northland to Auckland and coming from there I thought I knew what poverty was. On my second day of working as a GP here in Auckland I was … Read more
Are people who earn decent salaries too privileged to be thrown a bone by the government? Jenée Tibshraeny thinks not. This story first appeared on interest.co.nz. I would like to thank Housing Minister Phil Twyford for validating my generation’s “Ponsonby problems” as real ones. By setting the income caps for KiwiBuild eligibility at $120,000 for a … Read more
Many of the children abused in state care facilities over the past 40 years have grown up lost in the system. Ricky Houghton decided to overthrow the system completely. He Korowai Trust CEO Ricky Houghton comes from the Pita Sharples school of style – a perfectly moussed mullet, a sharp leather jacket and a gentle … Read more
Mould is one of the biggest health risks associated with New Zealand’s substandard housing stock. But since landlords seem averse to doing anything about the problem, Madeleine Chapman came up with an easy workaround. This story was published in June 2018. Earlier this week, nine students reached a confidential settlement agreement with their landlord following … Read more
Labour’s inexplicable timidity risks turning the much-vaunted KiwiBuild policy into a damp squib, argues Guyon Espiner for RNZ. The most ambitious interventionist economic plan pursued by a New Zealand government was named after a race. Think Big won the Melbourne Cup twice in the mid-1970s, making quite an impression on Allan Highet, a long forgotten … Read more
They’ve left wiggle room for some rainy day expenses, but the Labour-led government more than anything has sought to sell today’s funding announcements as an exercise in cleaning up National’s mess. Rebecca Stevenson reports from Wellington Grant Robertson hammered a few key messages in his budget address today: this is a budget that will lay … Read more
We all agree on the ambition – the question is how. 2Degrees Mobile founder Tex Edwards says the market has failed and lays out the case for more government intervention. What is the problem with housing in New Zealand? Most young people, and families who intend to buy one during their lives see them as … Read more
On Tuesday, economist Eric Crampton argued that legislation to prohibit foreign property buyers will do nothing to alleviate the housing crisis. Today, he lays out all the other reasons why the ban makes no sense. Yesterday, I wrote about how New Zealand wound up with a ban on foreign homebuyers. I said the policy was … Read more
An old cigarette factory in Masterton, a remnant from the Think Big era, has been re-purposed to tackle our affordable housing crisis. Rebecca Stevenson caught up with builder Mike Fox to find out how a plant in the Wairarapa is producing modular, kitset homes on the cheap. Houses in New Zealand are not expensive only … Read more
Rent Week 2018: Riding into office at least partly on the inability of the National government to solve – or acknowledge – the housing crisis in New Zealand, Labour now faces the titanic task of actually making something happen. Don Rowe speaks to Minister of Housing and Urban Development Phil Twyford about just how Labour … Read more
Rent Week 2018: With legislative changes set to increase costs for landlords, some smaller players may be forced out of the market. Property Investors’ Federation head Andrew King warns this won’t be good news for tenants. There appears to be a generally low opinion of people who provide rental properties for tenants to live in. … Read more
Rent Week 2018: Pushed to desperate measures by the high costs of renting with a small child, single parent Nichole Brown made a dramatic decision to reduce her housing costs. The hidden cost of single parenting goes beyond simply clothing and feeding children. Becoming a single parent had a huge impact on the cost of … Read more
Has the government been too keen to go for working groups, panels and inquiries, over actual action? Alex Braae counts the announcements. As new ministers get their feet under their desks, they start to cast around for things to do. All of a sudden they have access to the comparatively vast resources of the public … Read more
Rent Week 2018: Two tales from a small Tauranga community illustrate the challenges solo mums still face in the renting market. It was reported in January that Tauranga now outranks Auckland as New Zealand’s most unaffordable city and in the city’s pressured rental market, landlords these days have their pick of tenants and of rental … Read more
As New Zealand faces pressure to cool its overheated housing market, top-earning Airbnb hosts in two of our hardest-squeezed cities are raking in million-dollar fortunes. Talia Shadwell investigates. In tourist playground Queenstown, one Airbnb host made $2.9 million in the year to October accommodating short-term stays across 19 properties, according to new figures from research … Read more
The new coalition government has made a start on addressing the housing crisis with the just-announced independent housing review. But Jenny McArthur warns that Labour’s proposed KiwiBuild policy could risk adopting solutions that actually fuel the problems they claim to solve, reinforcing inequality for decades to come. After years of futile policy interventions, it’s time … Read more
One in five New Zealanders live in energy poverty, forced to choose between adequately heating their homes and other life essentials. Emily Writes looks back at her own experience raising a family in a drafty, cold, damp Kiwi home. One in five Kiwis live in energy poverty. That’s not good enough, so our friends at … Read more
House prices are how high now? Maria Slade takes a look behind an alarming graph and finds NZ’s housing ‘bubble’ may be overblown. Canadian commentator and investment adviser Hilliard McBeth alarmed the Twittersphere this week when he posted a graph showing New Zealand house prices 65 times higher than they were in 1970. This compares … Read more
Is Auckland in crisis over transport, housing, schools, you name it, or are we heading in the right direction? The answer, says Simon Wilson, is yes. The city voted both ways. Here’s what it really needs from the new government. We are two cities living as one, and each of those cities sees the place … Read more
Can families live in tiny houses without driving each other mad? Carole Payton talks to a mum who lives in a 15 square-metre home with her family of four to find out what it’s really like to live tiny. The popularity of ‘tiny houses’ keeps growing. All over social media teeny palaces of perfect proportions … Read more