COMMENT: The rental housing conundrum

Superb article. Thank you for speaking the hard truth about our industry - Simon Romanos

I agree as well. Considering that 32% of the population is renting obviously for political reasons is a nice pool of votes available. I am a landlord and I think the reform will actually create more problems just for the "bad tenants".

As an ex rental owner I must point out (at the risk that most here only wish to read comments that benefit them) that the line "The reality is that the government is a high-cost and inefficient landlord." is not actually true. The government itself is faced with high building and regulatory costs. The government also has those costs associated with providing housing for the least responsible and lowest paid portion of the population. I believe that in principle, housing should be subject to the natural forces of the market, (supply and demand) BUT the average person has worked out that owning something others need and will pay over the odds for is rather lucrative. I want to be on the side of landlords and I believe most are car-working, honest and caring but in this case it seems that the few who give the rest a bad name, provide the government with the excuse to suppress speculative property ownership through the proposed changes to tenancy laws.

I am staggered that this government has suggested to landlords to be kind and help out tenants ( and many have) at the same time as pushing unpopular RTA reforms through and also denying landlords the opportunity to defray ( now increased) losses on rentals from other income they earn. Where is the government being kind to landlords here??? This government is so ideologically hating of landlords that rents have increased dramatically since they got in and homelessness has massively increased. I am asking the government to take is blinkers off and do the job for all kiwis

Great honest article and two good comments so far. "The government cannot build public housing fast enough and now there are over 14,000 tenants on the public housing waiting list, more than twice as many as there were back in 2017." I think that this figure has risen to 14000 mainly because of one factor that is so PC that nobody even mentions it. The factor is that we have a large pool of poor quality tenants that no private landlord wants to rent to and quite rightly so.This pool is growing rapidly and that is what is contributing to the rising numbers on the public housing waiting list. This pool consists of people with the following issues: rent defaulters, drug addicts, criminals with records, bad references or no references, young single mothers with one or more of the previous mentioned issues. These issues are all the result of poor life choices.But taxpayers will have to fit the $25.6 million bill that will go to the Sustaining Tenancies programme and $8.67 million has been allotted to allow the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) to introduce housing broker roles. So once again law abiding tax payers will fit the enormous bills for other peoples poor life choices. And government thinks that you the private landlord will want to build connections with housing brokers to promote MSD clients as potential tenants, and match people with housing opportunities in the private rental market.Not only do they think you will but they expect you too even after they have declared "open war" on ALL private landlords. Its time for a coup d'état. I will gladly lead it from At Home Property Management headquarters in Tauranga :) Stay safe and check out our fantastic flat rate of 7% ( negotiable for multiple properties ), plus no vetting,advertising, inspection or tenant placement costs.

Agree agree with all/most of above. When is this country (let alone the govt) going to wake up to the fact that yes, maybe property investor/landlords do make a profit from delivering their product & offering their services (in housing) but so does every other business owner country & worldwide. I have worked in a few different industries & have a marketing background & fail to understand why landlords are earmarked as the bad guys! Sure, a few dodgy operators in all industries but most of us are hard working/7 days a week managing & maintaining property to somehow forge a self reliant future for our own selves & family. When profits are made/taxes are paid. Sure, there is some capital gain but if the property industry was an easy one, everyone would be doing it. There has to be incentive as the profit margins are small along the way. It's a lot of work & many retract from it for that exact reason. It's not easy to balance the books owning one property let alone additional ones. The govt needs to look at our social crisis as well as the housing crisis as was aptly pointed out above - as the number of poorer quality tenants seems to be rising & with tenancy laws changing dramatically, carefully managed tenant selection will become more important than ever. Of course there is much talk of a glut of rentals with AirB&B properties coming back onto market but these are generally a fairly high standard offering & owners will still need to be very selective if they want to keep their properties in good condition to return to the short term sector....if we get to see a return to domestic travel (as a minimum) soon. There are so many if's & buts out there - it's going to be testing times for all. Will be keen to see where we are at in 6months time for sure....

I always have a good laugh at the "landlords don’t pay tax" moan. As domestic rentals are gst inclusive, excluding bank costs I pay 15% tax on all goods and services I use on my properties.