Let us bathe in the tears of property investors
Fair warning this is a pure rant.
So, Jacinda Ardern made a pretty underwhelming announcement about housing the other day. It will likely have zero real impact on the lives of renters but seeing property investors, managers, and speculators so hysterical about it is a balm to my cold, dead heart.
The Government announced an extension of the bright-line test to 10 years. That means investors will be required to pay a tax on their capital gains when they sell a property before they’ve had it for ten years. Sounds completely sensible if not entirely logical to me. But I’m not a property investor.
They were absolutely losing it about this. Then came the removal of the ability to claim back the interest cost of a home loan against the rent for their property. Also known as the removal of the tax exemption they get for owning more than one house. This really made them throw their toys out of the cot because most property investors rely on people like us paying their income and subsiding their purchases.
How dare they have to pay tax like the people that have to live in their over-priced rentals?
They went on and on. They moaned so much I could write 8000 words on it. But I won’t. Instead let’s just sit back and enjoy the best and most hysterical comments made in public (!) by property investors and speculators.
Artwork by Sophie Bass.
And before we start - NOT ALL LANDLORDS. Please don’t come to me with your sad story about how you’re a landlord and now you have to sell your second, third, fourth house in a terrible housing market where *checks notes* the national average asking price is at an all-time high for the fifth month in a row.
The Top Five Most Cooked Comments Made by Property Investors
NZ Property Investors Federation president Andrew King was absolutely frothing when he said: "We all know one of the major downsides for investors in property is that the rent doesn't cover the costs of running many places. In New Zealand, it's cheaper to rent than to buy a house.”
Excuse me what? Rent is absolutely not cheaper than a mortagage for a shit tonne of people and guess what: RENT IS MEANT TO BE CHEAPER. That’s the whole point! You don’t own the house so it should be cheaper. I mean dude. This is the level of delusion we are facing. The president of the Property Investors Federation has literally forgotten that rentals are housing. Houses are for living in. Renters do not exist to line the pockets of property investors.And for the love of God can we quit with the ridiculous idea that investing in property isn’t profitable and rent doesn’t cover the cost of a mortgage? If it wasn’t profitable investors wouldn’t be doing it. And why do we subsidise the businesses of property investors and not the shop down the road? If a small business can’t be profitable, does the government bail them out? No. Yet we are supposed to make sure these dudes can rake in cash controlling our housing stock?
It was hard to pick just one comment from Auckland Property Investors Association vice-president Peter Lewis who said if you got rid of landlords you wouldn’t have extra houses - as if a house doesn’t exist if someone isn’t profiting from owning it. But I picked this one: "This will penalise people who have recently got into the sector or those who are about to over and above those who have been long-term landlords, got their borrowings down to a low level and have fewer costs on mortgages.”
Wait, hold on - are you suggesting people might think twice before investing in property when they already own property thus opening up the housing market to other people who have less income and assets? Wow. Wouldn’t that be terrible for first-home buyers. I mean if they didn’t have to fight people who own six homes already and can be approved for any mortgage because of it…I wonder what would happen?
Are you suggesting people might stop treating housing like a get rich quick scheme? And that would be a bad thing?
“My experience over the decades has been that many Kiwi landlords have not raised rents to levels they know the market could bear because they empathise with their tenants and could await capital gain to slowly accrue (sometimes swiftly) over time”. - Tony Alexander. Dunno if he’s an investor but he writes for One Roof lol.
What? Everyone I know had a rent increase the second that the pandemic rent freeze was over. Calling people “Kiwi landlords” instead of what they actually are - “property investors” - is absurd. Will some folks who just own one additional property that they rent out be impacted? Yes. They may have to work out if they can afford to keep their extra property. Just like how we need to work out if we can afford another rent increase or if we need to change jobs or get an extra job. Just like how any other business in the world has to work out if they can continue to run their business.
Every property investor/manager posing as a ‘mom and pop’ landlord: “We will have to increase rent!!”
They always do. A property manager once told me the rent freeze during Covid 19 was against his “human rights”. I asked what changed during Covid 19 that meant he had to increase rent. He explained that because of lockdown he couldn’t advertise the house to get more rent. So he had been personally hit by Covid 19. Seriously. He felt that because he couldn’t kick out his tenants to get tenants who could pay more, he should be able to charge his tenants more.
What we have learned from all of this is that despite landlords saying they’re not a business, they’re just a “service” offering housing to people who don’t have housing, is completely untrue.
They’re a business when it counts - when they want to get a tax break or credit. But they’re not a business when it comes to being held accountable for the quality of the product they’re renting to consumers.
It’s really simple. They’re a business except when they’re not and that depends on whether or not you want them to pay tax. Understand?
I know Judith Collins isn’t strictly a property investor but she’s basically a puppet controlled by property investors so I’m including her. I loved this quote: “We’ve already seen rents rise under three-and-a-half years of Labour governments. Those rents have gone up by $120 a week,” Collins said at Parliament.
Omg she’s right! This whole time I thought it was property management firms and investors, and landlords increasing rents but it was Jacinda Ardern the whole time! Thank God! Can someone just write her a letter and ask her to stop putting rent up?
Can’t believe we did all this mahi on housing inequality when all we had to do was ask her to stop hiking rents.
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We are going to see a lot of landlords insist they have to raise rent while also saying that they love the people who rent their homes and how awful is it that these lovely tenants they have will be homeless.
Never, ever forget that they’re making the choice to raise rent or kick their tenants. This is their choice.
The Government literally had to put in new rules to stop landlords raising rent relentlessly without reason - now they can only raise rent annually. Raising rent every year wasn’t enough either. Property managers, investors and landlords furiously protested this change.
The Government literally had to change the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 to stop property managers, investors and landlords from inviting or encouraging rental bidding. There is still no limit to how much landlords can increase rent by. In a housing crisis.
And yet, suddenly they’re worried about renters? Don’t be fooled. They’re worried about their bottom line.
What we do need to worry about is how the Government will address rent increases. I think it’s irreponsible not to include a rent freeze along with these changes since we know exactly what property managers and landlords will do. But that’s a post for another day….
One thing I seriously despise in housing talk is the term ‘mum and dad’ investors. Like what the actual fuck does that even mean, and how and why is it relevant to the conversation? Everyone from the media to property stakeholders and politicians alike have an obsession with using this adjective, this seemingly innocent subset of landlords/property investors. By using such an emotive term we’re supposed to empathise with them or view them in a different light, that instead of a shady lurky murky villainous investor character that no one personally knows being to blame, they are the good ones because they are parents, they are someone’s ‘mum and dad?’ Well, generally speaking the vast majority of adults are or do become parents in their lifetime. And it’s not the only thing that defines them. So why does having the title of mum or dad preclude one from being a dick head investor? Heck they may even do other nefarious activities. I know why it’s used and it’s quite clever. But I’m not fooled; it is bullshit marketing. It reminds me of the whole shitty charade that rape victims go through via courts, where if the rapist is known or comes from a ‘good family’ or does well in sports/academia etc they’re usually let off the hook. Those things shouldn’t excuse rape behaviour anymore than the fact that someone who happens to be a mum or dad should be excused from knowingly and actively participating in property speculation/being bad landlords. Let’s drop the mum and dad investor term and call a spade a spade. Only then when we take off the rose tinted glasses can we look at the cold hard facts that the housing divide is a fat hot mess and do meaningful stuff about it instead of cry fake tears. Mum and dad’s everywhere might even just have to go ‘invest’ elsewhere. Can you imagine?!
Totally agree. Media coverage driving me crazy with comments from all the self-entitled pricks.