The dumbest Stuff or Herald headlines (& other news media)

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#2953598 11-Aug-2022 19:01

There's also been research done by experimental psychologists showing that most people have absolutely no idea what "once in x year event" really means, which is what I was commenting on. Or, for that matter, what "x% chance of y means". So it should be reported as "Death Valley flooding an extremely unlikely event" or "nearly unheard-of event" or similar, not in terms that most readers won't understand.

freitasm

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#2954182 13-Aug-2022 11:37

From NZ Herald today "Aucklander Jonathan Brownlee owns 51 properties by the age of 26":

After his parents helped him buy his first Hamilton home for $413,750 in 2015, the Aucklander has steadily borrowed more from the banks until last week - while still aged 25 - he bought a block of eight units.

That took the number of properties he owns to 51.

He now owes $11m to the banks but has $9m in equity - the theoretical amount he would earn if he sold all his properties tomorrow.

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#2954200 13-Aug-2022 13:20

freitasm:

Aucklander Jonathan Brownlee ... now owes $11m to the banks but has $9m in equity - the theoretical amount he would earn if he sold all his properties tomorrow.

So if the residential real estate market goes off by another 10% - which would take it from wildly unaffordable to only very unaffordable -he would still owe the banks $11M against assets valued at about $8M. Hmmmm.

Maybe it's a good thing for young Jonathon that "if I owe the bank a thousand dollars, I have a problem, but if I owe the bank a million dollars, the bank has a problem", as we used to say in the old days

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#2954202 13-Aug-2022 13:50

PolicyGuy:
freitasm:

Aucklander Jonathan Brownlee ... now owes $11m to the banks but has $9m in equity - the theoretical amount he would earn if he sold all his properties tomorrow.

So if the residential real estate market goes off by another 10% - which would take it from wildly unaffordable to only very unaffordable -he would still owe the banks $11M against assets valued at about $8M. Hmmmm.

Maybe it's a good thing for young Jonathon that "if I owe the bank a thousand dollars, I have a problem, but if I owe the bank a million dollars, the bank has a problem", as we used to say in the old days

I haven’t read the article, but I assume from the quotes portion that the assets are currently worth $20m. With liabilities of $11m, he has equity of $9m. So a 10% drop off would reduce his equity to $7m

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#2954312 13-Aug-2022 15:27

add in one million+ pa income from all that.

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#2954351 13-Aug-2022 18:20

freitasm:

From NZ Herald today "Aucklander Jonathan Brownlee owns 51 properties by the age of 26":

To be honest, media have been doing that for years, spruiking the property market by pitching "you too can get rich with no education or risk" lies, even going to the effort of throwing in unrealistic figures or outright fabricated ones. I'm surprised it wasn't a Stuff article, since they seem to be obsessed with publishing Nine/Fairfax articles with no fact checking.

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#2954369 13-Aug-2022 20:35

freitasm:
From NZ Herald today "Aucklander Jonathan Brownlee owns 51 properties by the age of 26":

He doesn't own any of the properties, the bank does. And since he's massively, quite probably dangerously, leveraged, any glitch on any property is going to collapse the whole chain. The headline really needs to be rewritten to omit "owns" and add words like "chain of IOUs" and "duct-tape".

freitasm

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#2954374 13-Aug-2022 22:07

Exactly why I've posted in the "dumbest Stuff or Herald headlines" threas.

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#2954376 13-Aug-2022 22:35

IANAL but I think that while he meets his mortgage repayments he is the legal owner.

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#2954403 14-Aug-2022 09:46

Bung: IANAL but I think that while he meets his mortgage repayments he is the legal owner.

Correct. The titles will have his name on (or his company, Trust etc) not the banks. A mortgage simply gives the bank rights they can exercise over his property in certain circumstances.

All strength to his arm. There are plenty of extremely wealthy people in the world who’ve done what he’s doing to get there.

He could flog the lot and be worth $10 million before he’s 30 and have an income of about $500,000 a year for just watching bank statements turn up in the mail.

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#2954412 14-Aug-2022 10:58

Geektastic:

He could flog the lot and be worth $10 million before he’s 30 and have an income of about $500,000 a year for just watching bank statements turn up in the mail.

And that is a good thing? There are far too many billionaires and far too many impoverished people in our world, which is the reason it is collapsing. We have a crap economic system that is choking the planet.

People deserve to be rewarded for the work they do and the ideas they have. But it should not go on forever if they cease to be productive members of society. Getting rich for being rich is an obscenity and if that makes me a socialist, so be it.

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#2955011 15-Aug-2022 16:56

Geektastic:
Bung: IANAL but I think that while he meets his mortgage repayments he is the legal owner.

All strength to his arm. There are plenty of extremely wealthy people in the world who’ve done what he’s doing to get there.

And there are vastly more people who've played this game and had their house of cards collapse. And then there's those that play this game, but ensure that it's their creditors who are left holding the baby when it all comes crashing down.

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#2955014 15-Aug-2022 17:08

gzt: add in one million+ pa income from all that.

He's got 20M in assets yielding a gross return of 5% p a

His debt is 11M and even if its interest only, the rates will be moving from like 3% to like 6% in the next year, so his disposable is gonna go down by about 300K, + he's just lost his interest deductibility..

While he's not heavily leveraged.... his cash flow is gonna get squeezed if he can't raise rents. but the current market probably wont let him do that, so it will certainly be interesting times for him....