Home ownership...surely it's not a right, but a privilege?

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Forums › Politics › Home ownership...surely it's not a right, but a privilege?

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Mad Scientist
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#2109769 17-Oct-2018 14:14

Every government and opposition is so busy digging up dirt and attacking each other or busy getting rich themselves that neither foresight nor hindsight will be of any use .

Paul1977

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#2109770 17-Oct-2018 14:15

eph:

1) You don't rent a home, you rent a house (or apartment, etc.). With the current rules around responsibility for damages and other tenants right it's very difficult for landlord to rent you a home.

What's you definition of home? When I rented, I called it my home.

SpartanVXL

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#2109773 17-Oct-2018 14:21

Water, Power etc. all have costs associated but as utilities they are expected to be available reasonably easily. Housing should be in that list but can't be seen as such in the present.

There are a few ways it could work better, but with anything there will always be flaws that stop it or let it be abused.

An immediate naive approach would be to make property non-profit. No earnings on selling property or building new homes, only costs covered. Either that or the profits go to an organisation (gov) for development. Same with rentals/lease, only costs and profits go to making it better. Given how much noise is being made over capital gains and rent profits this should be a massive amount right? (hah)

Problems - it'd be a absolute cluster****, there is a whole economy behind property. I don't think the majority of people would be happy giving up the money potential, much less trusting it with a gov body.

Theres probably a host of other issues trying radical things like above. I honestly don't believe the current status quo is sustainable. When it becomes harder to live more people are going to get in the worse-off bracket and get fed up with people telling them to work harder.

MikeAqua

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#2109783 17-Oct-2018 14:32

MikeB4:

Fred99:

MikeB4:

it depends on what spin you put on the word property and if you link that to article 25. I am not adding anthing to it I have simply quoted the stated rights, others are adding to the words.

By no legal definition is "property" referring exclusively to "real estate".

There's no spin being applied - except by you possibly - trying to make that clause seem relevant. It isn't.

It is also not excluding it.

In that case ... I demand a starship. It's property and the UN says I have a right to own property so gimme, gimme, gimme.

Mike

MikeAqua

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#2109785 17-Oct-2018 14:35

SpartanVXL: Water, Power etc. all have costs associated but as utilities they are expected to be available reasonably easily.

On lots of properties, the owners have to make own arrangements for water.

Ditto sanitation - although the authorities can control how you self-provide sanitation.

Owners of some properties have to generate their own power.

Mike

eph

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#2109786 17-Oct-2018 14:37

mudguard:
eph:

I think the usual metric of house affordability is median house price to annual household income ratio. Anything below 3 is affordable, anything above is unaffordable (above 5 is considered severely unaffordable). Auckland currently is between 8.3 - 10.13 (Sep 18 data), NZ is 6.28.

What do you think government should do to fix this situation?

Start hiking the OCR? It would be a very blunt and painful tool. Or force the banks to lend on non owner occupied housing at commercial interest rates? Toy with LVRs, first home minimum 20% equity, second home, 40% across both, 60% across three...
I don't know, I'm just spit balling. But I do have friends who couldn't pay their mortgage at 8%..

Well, OCR is a painful tool, you raise it a bit and suddenly lots of people can't afford repayments (I'd say at less 6%, no even 8% - lots of people are really stretched because of these overpriced properties). That's one of the problems - you've got lots of homeowners who would suffer from this.

40% deposit is already in place for investment properties.

eph

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#2109788 17-Oct-2018 14:40

Paul1977:

eph:

1) You don't rent a home, you rent a house (or apartment, etc.). With the current rules around responsibility for damages and other tenants right it's very difficult for landlord to rent you a home.

What's you definition of home? When I rented, I called it my home.

I guess home is a house you can change/add stuff to feel like a home. With rentals you are quite often quite limited on what you can do/change (for a good reason).

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SpartanVXL

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#2109789 17-Oct-2018 14:41

MikeAqua:
SpartanVXL: Water, Power etc. all have costs associated but as utilities they are expected to be available reasonably easily.

On lots of properties, the owners have to make own arrangements for water.

Ditto sanitation - although the authorities can control how you self-provide sanitation.

Owners of some properties have to generate their own power.

True. I suppose I should reword to say that they're expected at the first level of living quality.

Paul1977

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#2109859 17-Oct-2018 15:07

eph:

I guess home is a house you can change/add stuff to feel like a home. With rentals you are quite often quite limited on what you can do/change (for a good reason).

There are some limitations, but generally I believe you can make a rental a "home".

eph

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#2109866 17-Oct-2018 15:18

Paul1977:

eph:

I guess home is a house you can change/add stuff to feel like a home. With rentals you are quite often quite limited on what you can do/change (for a good reason).

There are some limitations, but generally I believe you can make a rental a "home".

Well, you can put in some furniture and your personal belongings but anything you want to affix (put a picture up or paint a wall) you can't do without a permission. I'm not saying you can't get it (I'd say usually the landlords are pretty good) but it's not up to you.

Handsomedan

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#2109876 17-Oct-2018 15:26

Paul1977:

eph:

I guess home is a house you can change/add stuff to feel like a home. With rentals you are quite often quite limited on what you can do/change (for a good reason).

There are some limitations, but generally I believe you can make a rental a "home".

That's one of the things that has always bugged me.

When I was a renter, my home was where I lived. As such, I looked after it, kept it clean, made minor repairs, as they were what I expected to deal with in a home.

As a home owner, I am in the same boat, but I also pay Rates, Water rates, etc.

Why is it that people so often don't treat a rental as a home? I simply don't understand that kind of thinking/behaviour.

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Lias

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#2109894 17-Oct-2018 15:53

eph:

What do you think government should do to fix this situation?

I can think of quite a few things.

Eliminate council related compliance costs (e.g. building consents, infrastructure levies, etc) for first home builders who want to build without a developer. Commercial developers can and should pay these fees, but Joe Blogs should be able to get a couple of his mates and build a house over a few months of working in weekends like was done 50 years ago.

Make covenants on the types of buildings in new subdivisions illegal, because every developer always insists houses in their subdivision should all be new and a certain colour and style etc. You should be able to buy any section in a new development , and self build a log cabin or transport an old house onto it, etc.

Introduce Capital Gains Tax on all houses after the first (e.g. you can own a family home, but if you own a home and a bach or a home and a rental, you pay CGT on one).

Introduce punishingly large taxes on anyone owning more than a couple of houses. E.g. If you own 5 houses, you get taxed 10% of their total worth annually.

Only allow citizens who reside in NZ to own residential property, and require anyone who's not a citizen to sell their property within a very short time frame or forfeit it to the crown, say 60 days. Withdraw from any free trade agreements or treaties we are signatories to that would prevent this. It would cause a nice glut, and prices would nosedive as all the foreign investors tried to salvage something.

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Mad Scientist
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#2109906 17-Oct-2018 16:13

IMO one thing could do it.

If you can't provide residency status a tax is applied on the land value of what you own.

eph

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#2109914 17-Oct-2018 16:22

Lias:

eph:

What do you think government should do to fix this situation?

I can think of quite a few things.

Eliminate council related compliance costs (e.g. building consents, infrastructure levies, etc) for first home builders who want to build without a developer. Commercial developers can and should pay these fees, but Joe Blogs should be able to get a couple of his mates and build a house over a few months of working in weekends like was done 50 years ago.

The costs just don't disappear so you would just move them to ratepayers? For more houses you still need bigger stormwater, wastewater network, etc. Self build is still allowed (I've got a friend who's building his own house in Northland). To some extend of course - licensed work (like electricity and plumbing) needs to be done by licensed person and you still get council inspection like normal build but you can build the house yourself with friends.

Make covenants on the types of buildings in new subdivisions illegal, because every developer always insists houses in their subdivision should all be new and a certain colour and style etc. You should be able to buy any section in a new development , and self build a log cabin or transport an old house onto it, etc.

Not really sure how this would help the market but I'm all for more freedom :).

Introduce Capital Gains Tax on all houses after the first (e.g. you can own a family home, but if you own a home and a bach or a home and a rental, you pay CGT on one).

I think this will come eventually, just need to work out correct rules around that. Not convinced though it would have a huge impact on the market.

Introduce punishingly large taxes on anyone owning more than a couple of houses. E.g. If you own 5 houses, you get taxed 10% of their total worth annually.

This would be I think quite hard to implement - I'd say all of these bigger investors have complex companies/trusts structure in place which owns the various properties, etc. It's not that easy to track physical owners.

Only allow citizens who reside in NZ to own residential property, and require anyone who's not a citizen to sell their property within a very short time frame or forfeit it to the crown, say 60 days. Withdraw from any free trade agreements or treaties we are signatories to that would prevent this. It would cause a nice glut, and prices would nosedive as all the foreign investors tried to salvage something.

I think this is quite extreme and would be quite damaging to NZ. Also don't forget that there are a lots of residents who can't or don't want to become citizens. Also lots of rich people come only for summer from colder regions around the world who basically just come to spend money.

Geektastic

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#2109962 17-Oct-2018 17:54

I think possibly having somewhere to live might (might) be argued to be a right.

Actually owning the said somewhere, not so much.

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