V for victory for landlords

That is the reporting back of the Residential Tenancies Bill to Parliament. Now this bill is the bible which both sides of the housing market have to obey. The current act is more than two decades old and there has been lots of talk of changes to it in recent years.

I suspect many tenants will have wished Labour had made more haste with this project as they would have ended up with a better outcome than they are now facing.

Landlords on the other hand are pretty happy that National is now running the show on this one, as the bill put back in the house over the past week shifts the balance of power more towards property investors and landlords.

Both the NZ Property Investors Federation and the Real Estate Institute are happy with the direction it is going.

Indeed, Richard Evans from REINZ’s property management group says in the past the rules tended to favour the tenants, but now they “restore the balance”.

His view is that in the past people were put off property investment because of the difficulties around tenant management, but this new set of rules (if passed) will “encourage  people  to invest in property again”.

A key issue is if the bill gets through Parliament. I suspect it will, but I wouldn’t be against a wager that Labour and the Greens will kick up a big fuss about some of the changes.

Their fault though for not moving on the changes when they had the chance. After all they began the “reform” process early on in their nine years in power.