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It seems that anyone who can raise a pencil has an opinion on how to fix the housing affordability issues in Auckland. Housing is such an emotive issue and I am writing this based almost solely on memory so if there are inaccuracies you should probably put it down to drained brain cells as much as anything.<\/p>\n
Lets face it my focus is on finding a house for myself, not solving the grand picture, so if this post seems a bit slanted you can understand.<\/p>\n
As much as I would like to live in a really nice neighborhood I know I can\u2019t afford this but equally I don\u2019t want to live somewhere that is filled with kids who play in the street or young children sit bored in the gutters with revving of engines and screaming coming from the houses not to mention a pitball at each door. Don\u2019t even get me started on pitballs. So if you read this and feel I am having a go at your area I\u2019m not I am simply saying it\u2019s not where I want to live<\/p>\n
Clearly the current situation won\u2019t see a silver bullet solution. It is important to realize that other than building a zillion new homes what we need is buyers to drop their prices, it does no good to invoke a policy that simply makes the buyers go to ground for another 5 years. As much as it pains me the answer must be measured and gradual.<\/p>\n
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Any buyer knows a huge percentage of properties are sold via auction, this is more of a testament to the effectiveness of Agents than the effectiveness of getting the best price. Due diligence when buying at auction dictates you get a LIM, a building inspection and a chat with your lawyer before raising you hand to bid. So often I read of people who put time, money and emotion into preparing for an auction only to fall in a heap on the day.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think auctions work for the vendor with many buyers like myself not even considering houses at auction \u2013 dismissed out of hand. If I had my way TradeMe would give me a filter I could set so that auctions didn\u2019t even show up.<\/p>\n
Politics aside restricting non-resident buyers to building new homes is consistent with overseas practices and makes perfect sense. I am a firm believer in facing financial facts and I have a strong dislike of the protectionism that I lived through in the 70\u2019s and 80\u2019s. However I don\u2019t believe restricting no-residents is protectionism and certainly not racist.<\/p>\n
As far as Asian buyers go lets knock this one on the head right now. I have no time or place for racism, just because the person who out bids you doesn\u2019t look European or Maori doesn\u2019t mean they aren\u2019t a Kiwi \u2013 even if there English isn\u2019t perfect. Yes I think it\u2019s perfectly valid to restrict foreign ownership but that doesn\u2019t discriminate based on race.![\"IHateRentingV4\"](\"http:\/\/www.zoyinc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/IHateRentingV4.jpg\")
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I have a passionate dislike for land banking, its nothing but a money making exercise and does nothing for the housing market. If I had my way there would be a mechanism that crippled any land banking incentives.<\/p>\n
It would seem that all the developments or at least the non-apartment\/town house developments are catering for the higher end of the market. Twenty years ago there were good-sized developments targeting the lower end of the market. Now don\u2019t get me wrong a whole suburb of budget homes doesn\u2019t work either. What\u2019s needed is balance, I know we aren\u2019t going to get the rich living with WINZ customers but there is something in between. It\u2019s a real tricky one but it\u2019s got to start with cheaper land and that isn\u2019t going to happen while land banking is allowed to continue.<\/p>\n
Every time I look at a modern attractive monolithic home I have mixed feels. On one hand I feel it\u2019s a missed opportunity because it\u2019s another house that is scratched immediately off my list. On the other hand I can\u2019t help but feel sorry for the owner, I mean you put your hard earned money down on a beautiful house, you get the rubber stamp from the council and then just when you are nice and settled you find it drops drastically in value because no-one want to take a risk that it won\u2019t turn into a leaking building.<\/p>\n
On the surface it seems like the smart thing would be to buy a monolithic and re-clad. Unfortunately this works out in the neighborhood of $800 – $1200 for every square meter of your house. So if you buy a 100m2 house then its in the ballpark of $100k to re-clad.<\/p>\n
Apparently when you do re-clad the council are all over you like a rash making sure the house has no signs of rot \u2013 4 or 5 inspections if I remember right. I guess you can\u2019t blame them but it\u2019s certainly not a case of rip of the old cladding and nail on some weatherboard.<\/p>\n
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I am not sure where this is with the great \u201cunitary plan\u201d of our wonderful \u201cSuper City\u201d but I for one have even less time for this idea than I do for pitballs. Why is that people who have no financial worries decide that the rest of us would like live boxed in apartments? Yes I have heard the arguments, they will be nice and pleasant to live \u2013 yea right! Listen to the people for once, we don\u2019t all want to live in boxes, lots of us want space from our neighbors with\u00a0 grass under our feet.<\/p>\n
You might have picked up on the fact that I don\u2019t really relish the renting experience. What people need to realize is that for many people buying their own home is not so much about getting a home and more about not renting. Lets face it most the people who rent don\u2019t actually want to, sure it works well for some but there is a truck load of us who simply have no choice.<\/p>\n
Life is constraining enough but when you go home to a rented home it just feels like more of the same. You are there at the grace of someone who is just as likely to sell up and leave you in the lurch.<\/p>\n
If you are someone who takes price in where they live and puts effort into getting things the way you want it\u2019s pretty hard because you really can\u2019t make it your own and there is zero motivation to improving the place.<\/p>\n
As I have said there are lots of people like us whose motivation to buy is not based on investing money but quality of life. Obviously you still have to consider the value of your property, but that\u2019s not the driving force. Every year that you continue to rent is a year you are not paying off your mortgage, another year when the affordability is getting further out of reach.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been done to death but the ratio of incomes to house prices is just insane. Yes a lot of couples, hell of a lot actually, have both parents working but that\u2019s not true for everyone. If you are a family on one income buying a modest house is just out of the question. It is impossible to just pay the bills let alone save up any form of deposit.<\/p>\n
Landlords are going to increase rents to match the much higher cost of homes and this is going to force people out of suburbs. It just doesn\u2019t make sense, the only thing that makes any sense is that landlords are only interested in the profit in the increase in value of the house rather than the rent so they can afford to have a disparity between rents and house prices \u2013 but it still doesn\u2019t make sense, there has to be a correction coming up.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Things have to change !<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It seems that anyone who can raise a pencil has an opinion on how to fix the housing affordability issues in Auckland. Housing is such an emotive issue and I am writing this based almost solely on memory so if there are inaccuracies you should probably put it down to drained brain cells as much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1772,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[114,213,214,215,212,216],"class_list":["post-1739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tpblog","tag-auckland","tag-first-home-buyer","tag-house","tag-mortgage","tag-renting","tag-ring-fence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoyinc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoyinc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoyinc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoyinc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoyinc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1739"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoyinc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1776,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoyinc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions\/1776"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoyinc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoyinc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoyinc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoyinc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}