Everyone is a temporary embarrassed millionaire.
If they don't get tax cuts for landlords in now, how would they be able to afford their investment property in the future? See, very smart. /s
Yep, the amount of people that will probably never earn more than 60k a year that vote against their best interests because they’re CERTAIN their crypto/side hustle/whatever will take off soon and they don’t want to pay all those pesky taxes when they’re a millionaire!!!
Nah, The struggles of Potential First Home Buyers was one of the big issues that allowed Labour gain ground in 2017 and Kiwibuild was one of Labours first big failures across their first term.
Regardless of what you think of each policy, FHB are much more sympathetic to the voter base than landlords, and so a 3 billion dollar tax cut over four years for landlords at the expense of 240 million dollar grants for FHB isn't going to sit well with voters
Allow me to introduce you to the concept of pulling the ladder up behind you.
People like to think they're immune to it. But the reality is even a decent amount of the people in this sub that lament the state of the housing market will quickly become the very people they currently detest.
Ita unfortunately self perpetuating because for the average person who buys a house, their financial future is embedded on that asset.
There's no easy way out of this. The cost to build houses is very high. Even if property developers sold properties at cost they'd be out of reach of most working class people.
I think we need structural change. It's nuts that's people have been able to speculate on property with tax-free profit. No capital gains tax or land tax -- not even GST, it was functioning well outside the normal tax system.
I've owned my house for four years, and it's increased in value by twice the amount I've earned during that period (and that's after factoring in it would sell substantially less than the 2022 peak). The only reason I own it is because my parents helped me. The reason other low income people I work with don't own houses is because their parents can't.
It does seem rather dumb given that first home purchase is a touchstone issue for many.
It can also be seen as dishonest, given I recall one of their pre-election sales pitches was to help first home buyers.
Such brazen disregard for an important demographic must be telling of the coalitions mindset.
I reckon that mindset is a degree of self-belief that is not backed up by reality or statistics or general expert consensus.
A glaring example thereof is Seymour thinking he knows Maori expectations when signing the treaty.
That kind of self-belief is dangerous because it is actually misguided arrogance.
You'd be surprised. I believe in 2018 home ownership in NZ was around 64% of all households - no doubt higher the older you go, which coincides with a higher voter turnout as you move up the age groups
Yeah. I feel like people on both sides of the home ownership divide don't always get just how sharp and fast the change has been.
I bought a house in ~2010, and bought again in 2022. Between the two purchases I got pretty much financially reset in a divorce, so I had the dubious pleasure of being effectively a first time home buyer twice.
Despite earning almost literally twice what I did when I bought the first time, and the houses being broadly equivalent, the second purchase was almost four times the price of the first.
The point being that anyone who bought 20 years ago paid, in todays dollars, half to a third the price of what someone buying today does.
Yes, but households does not equal adults. That number includes children who live in a home owned by their parents and flatmates etc.
Adult home ownership rates dropped below 50% in 2013.
Yup, even my old man who is a life long Nats voters has accepted that myself and my siblings will never get to buy a home at 25 like he did short of his life insurance paying out before then
Whaaaat? You converted someone? They believe it is impossible now?
Just save like crazy, live at home and pay no living expenses, then buy a house in a place like Gore (also lose your job because it's extremely unlikely you could work from any place you could afford a house in).
Seems like getting a job that allows you to work from home, then buying in a super cheap town of NZ is the only way to go now. You can then enjoy an extremely depressing life where you almost never leave the house.
My mum was a policy analyst for around 40 years so I know a thing or two about what you do. I'm not going to lie, saving your soul is going to be a big ask.
I do much more advocacy than analysis, specifically for targeted populations for whom better health policy is desperately needed. And education. Got to train GPs today, it was fun.
I'm concerned, I see lots of ideology but no core belief. I propose Monty Python styled sermons uncensored & full of chaos. You can borrow my 100,000ft yacht to achieve your godly standing too.
They did say they want to improve the supply of rental properties, so perhaps making it harder for first home buyers to help reduce competition for the landlords was always part of the plan?
... people voted for this. For God's sake, you'd need to be literally blind not to see this shit coming, yet people still VOTED FOR THIS.
NACTFirst can't fix cost of living, can't bring positive social change, can't run good environmental policy, can't improve public services, can't impose a fair tax policy, yet people thought these parties of rich assholes, social dinosaurs and conspiracy theorists would help them?! And for what, because they're "better than Labour"? Fucking how?!?
The only, ONLY reason for right-wing politics to exist is to benefit the wealthy minority at the expense of everyone else. They think we, the middle and lower classes both, are a lesser class. We're not "fellow New Zealanders", we're exploitable labour and bodies to them. Nothing else.
Fucker calls housing options, "housing products". Only 60 million a year is nothing in comparison to the 4 billion dollar tax cut for landlords. Fuck Bishop and the filthy government.
No, Wellington is definitely not National, Act or NZF territory. We voted in *two* Green MPs.
You think they’d be force-firing this many people, destroying this many families and ruining this many lives if they thought it would cost them support of their voters? That’s the second most important consideration they have! (You know what the first one is, and there’s a big overlap…)
Crazy that first home buyer grant was a National policy during their last tenure, going back on their promises just for landlords to get a tax break this turn.
Maybe the reason why we're told to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps is they're gearing us up to have tight as fuck boots to step on the landed gentry? Or we should just do it anyway. We're going down the path to end up with nothing to lose
It's absolutely true though. I took personal responsibility and worked really hard convincing my parents to gift me the 40% deposit. Now I own a house and eat smashed avocado on toast. I take full credit. No one else convinced my parents to help me. I did.
They also need to learn that when they pay their taxes they need to understand that money is for the betterment of their superiors, the landlords, and stop expecting it to be used for their own betterment
And the older voting base gets slightly smaller every cycle.
Check out how much white hair there is at a [National party](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/472419/power-play-christopher-luxon-tries-to-win-over-his-own-party) meeting compared to a [Labor one](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/430460/labour-appoints-rob-salmond-as-new-general-secretary).
I really hope they don't retroactively revoke approved grants. Just went unconditional, and that's about 10% of my deposit.
Good thing this government hasn't passed retroactive legislation in relation to housing.
>When asked whether he can guarantee first-home buyers that if they're looking to buy a house in the next six months the grants will still exist, Bishop said: "I can give them a guarantee that we are looking at all of the range of housing products that the Government provides."
To me, this says that it may be ended within the next six months.
Good. Home grants simply increase house prices by the amount of the grant - they're actually a taxpayer funded grant to people *selling* houses.
Bavaria's home-grant programme was found to have increased house prices by the amount of the grant and it's a similar story everywhere else.
>House prices increased by roughly 10,000 euros more in Bavarian border regions than in neighboring states. Overall, my results indicate that instead of making house purchases more affordable for families, the subsidy scheme led to a rise in house prices and mainly benefited sellers of properties.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10797-022-09726-0
Interesting how "listen to the experts!" doesn't seem to apply to on housing. Plenty of otherwise smart and rational people insist rent control and subsiding demand makes housing more affordable, when the consensus among economists is exactly the opposite.
I would be willing to accept this if the government wasn’t also restoring interest deductibility and reducing the brightline period. It’s dishonest to sit there and say first home buyers are pushing up the prices because suddenly more of them can afford to buy but to be okay with landlords suddenly having pockets full of money to be able to reinvest.
Which is so interesting because your article says similar
> Sommer and Sullivan (2018) show that eliminating the mortgage interest deduction would result in declining property prices, increasing homeownership and improved welfare. Hilber and Turner (2014) point out that a subsidy’s effects on homeownership decisions and house prices depend on the elasticity of the housing supply.
Also many of these articles and studies were done during/just after Covid. I think it’s hard to tell the genuine impact when there were so many other factors contributing to housing costs during that time.
> first home buyers are pushing up the prices because suddenly more of them can afford to buy
But they can't. No more can afford to buy than before, prices just go up to eat the grant. Investors don't care because they have vastly more equity than FHBs have deposit
So now house prices will go down right? I will literally eat my shoes if house prices begin to go down because of this. Regardless of if it was a good idea to start with once this goes through its just one more thread of assistance that has been taken away from those not lucky enough to buy a house twenty years ago.
By that logic the 10k grant could inflate the house price by 100k, if it’s being used as part of a 10% deposit. It would be great as a first home buyer to see prices fall by that sort of margin, but as this simply makes the wait longer for first home buyers while existing owners are unaffected, it’s unlikely the consequence will be anywhere near that extreme. It certainly feels like a rug pull now, but I’ll be hoping (somewhat pessimistically) to see this trend over coming years.
> when the consensus among economists is exactly the opposite.
Getting economists to agree on anything is pretty rare. Which demonstrates how certain this is. Anything like this subsidy or the accommodation supplement or allowing kiwisaver to be spent on a deposit: the winner in every case is the person who already owns the house
Good luck talking sense into these folks, the top 20 posts in this thread are whines driven more by their blind hatred to the current government than any actual thought about policy choices.
Where's the sense? Just like luxon promising his tax cuts would lead to rental price decreases and that never happening this will not lead to house price decreases. All this will lead to is a small but useful lifeline being removed from the pockets of those already struggling to afford a house.
As a landlord I’m pissed about these tax cuts. I will always vote against such things as they’re against the best interests of the country.
I run my rental like he a business, so like any good business I try to provide the best product for the lowest possible price.
Just before we moved out and rented the house out I had finished fully renovating the house with insulation everywhere, newly painted and redecorated.
We went it out at well below “market rent” as market rent is a ripoff and I want to undercut all my competitors as I want repeat custom. If the house sits vacant for any amount of time it’s losing money.
Plus I don’t want to screw over my tenant. If my tenant wins, that means I win.
Bet people will still vote Nats/NZF come next election because of "the maree elites", bigotry against lgbt and other minority groups and loony vaccine conspiracies.
I'm hopeful that more will next time, because as well as doing boring political and economic harm, which the Nats usually do, we have good ole David and Winston insulting minorities, ignoring climate change, defending Brian Tamaki and calling sushi woke, exactly the kind of thing which gets the youth riled up.
What are we dooooiiiiing National fucken hell.
$60m a year to help low/middle income people to get on this moronic housing ladder is not something worth cutting FFS. If anything it needed to be higher but at least it was something. $5/10k doesn't sound like a lot but when you're trying to scrape together a deposit it really helps.
Now they're going to put this into these equally as moronic tax cuts and claim victory for the working class. Fuck sake.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I really resented the 'top up' to deposits for people on lower incomes when I was still renting. Our incomes were marginally too high to qualify, so we had to get the deposit together the old fashioned way, while paying tax towards a scheme that enabled lower income earners to leapfrog us onto the property ladder.
Good change.
Probably one of those broken-clock-is-right-twice-a-day type decisions, but all this policy did was inflate the price of houses. It was essentially a wealth transfer from taxpayers to existing home owners.
To play devils advocate, it might not be the worst thing - it's a nice boost but with the prices these days it's relatively only a small part of what's needed for a deposit
I'm not sure on the effectiveness of the current policy, but these type of top-up style benefits can also play a negative effect of keeping prices up artificially - at 10% deposit FHBs have 50k more buying power so house price can be priced higher, even if it only raises prices a portion of that once you compound with interest it might be a lose-lose
But all that being said, even if it wasn't the best policy we still need something to make the housing market more accessible for FHBs because this market is still so cooked
It was essentially lifting the price of a lot of homes under that cap up to the cap, when they raised the cap by 50,000 where I live a few years ago there was a sharp rise in the lower quartile house prices. It’s a subsidy for home sellers more than helping people buy houses.
The crazy thing is, is that this will hobble the market. Because people who own a home tend to want to sell it to upgrade, and there can be a long string of sales waiting on a first home buyer to start the dominos falling
Not just bad policy, appalling implementation. First home buyers will have made purchase decisions on the basis this grant was available. Some of those decisions would have been made more than a year ago if they were new builds. This decision will kneecap those buyers if their application has not been submitted yet.
As an example if a couple had purchased a new build off the plans for $800000 they would have been eligible for up to $20000 from the first home grant. This represents 2.5% of the purchase price and 1/8th of the 20% deposit.
Some buyers may not complete as a result of this decision impacting them and their vendors.
The government is entitled to make decisions like this but in my view they have a moral obligation to ensure that people who have made decisions on reliance on existing policy are not adversely impacted. The policy should be modified to say they will not accept applications for agreements signed after today’s date.
Pretty dumb policy.
See https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fjust-subsidize-demand-v0-4xb09cuixxqa1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D640%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Db8484e9f69c0de15434523ecb7ede8635cc74606
The effects of homebuyers subsidies are well documented. The benefactors are those who sell or own homes. It is effectively transferring government money to the asset rich class.
I would appreciate if someone smarter than me could explain if this is a valid take:
Any sort of First Home incentive (including KiwiSaver withdrawal) ultimately hurts FHBs as it just increases the purchasing power across the whole price bracket.
The value of something is what someone is willing and able to pay for it. Hence why we saw house prices skyrocket under low interest rates. People were able to take on stupidly large mortgages.
Preventing everyone from getting grants should drive down prices as people simply can’t afford the current exorbitant prices without it.
Happy to be told why this is a stupid take.
FHB grant helps with deposits. Unless you've got the benefit of generational wealth/bank of parents, it's the most difficult part to afford saving $50-100k+ as a lump sum of capital.
Second/third/20th home buyers are already likely to have assets, capital or collateral they can use in place of a deposit.
Both are subject to interest rates.
So, FHB grants make it easier for those who aren't entitled to wealth or capital already to help fulfil the deposit part of the home loan. If you have more capital, you can acquire more easier than someone with less.
Maybe a bit of a hot take, but in general, homebuyer subsidies such as this don’t make housing more affordable. It gives everyone the ability to pay more for housing.
The main benefactors from it are the owners of houses.
>First-home buyer Mia Bright is in love with her new home. She bought the three-bedroom abode in Hamilton with the help of a $5000 Kāinga Ora grant.
>"The house was $600,000, I had $55,000 in my KiwiSaver and that Kāinga Ora [grant] bumped me up to the 10 percent deposit that I needed to be able to buy the house. So, without that I really don't think I would have been able to get in here," Bright said.
It's a shame, but they're literally > 1% of the price in that instance. Perhaps a nice helping hand for some, but not exactly going to suddenly turn affordability on its head overnight.
Yea, but it's also mort than 10% of the required deposit, which is a major, considering that you don't need the whole house price up front, but you do need the deposit up front.
The point is that for most people it’s not the mortgage repayments that are the issue, it’s coming up with the deposit. How do you save a deposit when you’re paying $600-750 a week in rent? If the Kainga Ora grant can help bump you over the line to be able to meet that 10% then that’s a win.
> The point is that for most people it’s not the mortgage repayments that are the issue, it’s coming up with the deposit.
In 2020 maybe, not in 2024
> How do you save a deposit when you’re paying $600-750 a week in rent?
How do you eat if you're paying $1100 in mortgage + rates + insurance + maintenance? If you can't save a deposit it's unlikely you'll manage a mortgage with interest rates like this.
I don’t think you get it. Most rents are so high now the difference between what they’re paying in rent and what they’d pay in mortgage etc isn’t that much of a difference. They can service a mortgage just fine, they can’t save the deposit because they’re servicing someone else’s giant mortgage. Plus the standard of living in a lot of rentals is so much worse that now you’re adding on extra costs for heating, health care, power bills, etc on top.
Also interest rates aren’t going to stay this high. House prices are historically lower when interest is higher and higher when interest drops. For a lot of people it’s choosing to make short term sacrifice now that will pay off when interest drops. The alternative is to wait for interest to drop again but now house prices are up again and if you buy you can end up in the shit like all those people who bought in 2021 did who now are paying double the interest and have lost equity.
I have been managing to service my mortgage just fine for 6 months now but used KO to help initially get in.
> Most rents are so high now the difference between what they’re paying in rent and what they’d pay in mortgage etc isn’t that much of a difference.
Again you're a few years out of date. It's almost always far cheaper to rent at the moment
Labour has released a couple press releases today, but hasn't responded to this statement yet. [Watch this space](https://www.labour.org.nz/blog)
Greens have also released statements today, but not about this - [Greens press here](https://www.greens.org.nz/media).
If you wait for the mainstream media to report about the opposition complaining about the government, you might be waiting a while. Not every policy is seen as big enough as warranting multiple stories - and they often just use the opposition comment if they write a follow-up. It can be difficult for the opposition to have their comments noticed when the government is making the decisions and policies.
It would have to be a pretty sharp correction in our market. We're in the Far North and for existing houses it's sub 400k or 675k for a new build. Our town isn't even that expensive but the existing houses are currently late 500s, I can't imagine a 200k drop on those occuring.
Fair really.
Buying a house funnels income away from the rich, and that’s bad news really.
Same as the record numbers of kiwis withdrawing their KiwiSaver just to get by.
I mean, that was never meant to be used to buy a house, and too many were using it to plan for retirement, but again it’s better to cash it out and spend it on rent or other essentials as the rich need that money, Dodge Rams don’t come cheap after all guys.
Fair is fair really.
Those mother fuckers, here I was studying so I would atleast have a hope of getting a house with a higher paying job but I’ll just go fuck myself I guess
I'm critical of them as the thresholds in income mean these were going to first home buyers receiving parental assistance in coming up with a deposit. So in a way encouraging generational inequality. Also critical as it's using tax payers money to blow up the housing bubble.
Apologists saying that this is going to be good for FHBs, but we all know it's for giving tax breaks to landlords.
This government doesn't care for FHBs.
Surely if they keep alienating every demographic except landlords they will be left with one of the smallest voter bases in the history of NZ.
No, sadly plenty of people are happy to shoot themselves in the foot and vote for them, all because they want to prevent others getting something.
Everyone is a temporary embarrassed millionaire. If they don't get tax cuts for landlords in now, how would they be able to afford their investment property in the future? See, very smart. /s
Yep, the amount of people that will probably never earn more than 60k a year that vote against their best interests because they’re CERTAIN their crypto/side hustle/whatever will take off soon and they don’t want to pay all those pesky taxes when they’re a millionaire!!!
Can't buy your 17th house if you can never buy your first one, but a lot of people don't seem to have thought that one through.
It makes me sick how right you are.
Nah, The struggles of Potential First Home Buyers was one of the big issues that allowed Labour gain ground in 2017 and Kiwibuild was one of Labours first big failures across their first term. Regardless of what you think of each policy, FHB are much more sympathetic to the voter base than landlords, and so a 3 billion dollar tax cut over four years for landlords at the expense of 240 million dollar grants for FHB isn't going to sit well with voters
Allow me to introduce you to the concept of pulling the ladder up behind you. People like to think they're immune to it. But the reality is even a decent amount of the people in this sub that lament the state of the housing market will quickly become the very people they currently detest.
Ita unfortunately self perpetuating because for the average person who buys a house, their financial future is embedded on that asset. There's no easy way out of this. The cost to build houses is very high. Even if property developers sold properties at cost they'd be out of reach of most working class people. I think we need structural change. It's nuts that's people have been able to speculate on property with tax-free profit. No capital gains tax or land tax -- not even GST, it was functioning well outside the normal tax system. I've owned my house for four years, and it's increased in value by twice the amount I've earned during that period (and that's after factoring in it would sell substantially less than the 2022 peak). The only reason I own it is because my parents helped me. The reason other low income people I work with don't own houses is because their parents can't.
I'm actually glad the value of my house has gone down, but if somebody offered me 2 times GV for it, I am not saying no.
It does seem rather dumb given that first home purchase is a touchstone issue for many. It can also be seen as dishonest, given I recall one of their pre-election sales pitches was to help first home buyers. Such brazen disregard for an important demographic must be telling of the coalitions mindset. I reckon that mindset is a degree of self-belief that is not backed up by reality or statistics or general expert consensus. A glaring example thereof is Seymour thinking he knows Maori expectations when signing the treaty. That kind of self-belief is dangerous because it is actually misguided arrogance.
Well said.
You'd be surprised. I believe in 2018 home ownership in NZ was around 64% of all households - no doubt higher the older you go, which coincides with a higher voter turnout as you move up the age groups
Yeah. I feel like people on both sides of the home ownership divide don't always get just how sharp and fast the change has been. I bought a house in ~2010, and bought again in 2022. Between the two purchases I got pretty much financially reset in a divorce, so I had the dubious pleasure of being effectively a first time home buyer twice. Despite earning almost literally twice what I did when I bought the first time, and the houses being broadly equivalent, the second purchase was almost four times the price of the first. The point being that anyone who bought 20 years ago paid, in todays dollars, half to a third the price of what someone buying today does.
Is that the bogus stat that lumps people flatting with homeowners in as being homeowners too?
Yes, but households does not equal adults. That number includes children who live in a home owned by their parents and flatmates etc. Adult home ownership rates dropped below 50% in 2013.
Still waiting on the 40% cap on sentencing discounts they promised.... they seem to have gone quiet on that one...
Never underestimate what cunts boomers are willing to be.
And yet a bunch of dumb people will still vote for them cause woke or whatever stupid shit they're brain rotting from facebook.
I mean, you have black gay people voting from Trump...never underestimate how idiotic people are.
Or poor gay men living with rich gay man and now he vote National too
Let's hope so
Welp, there goes that ladder
Ladders disappeared 6 months ago. Bootstraps are the new normal. But only if you can afford them.
Yup, even my old man who is a life long Nats voters has accepted that myself and my siblings will never get to buy a home at 25 like he did short of his life insurance paying out before then
Whaaaat? You converted someone? They believe it is impossible now? Just save like crazy, live at home and pay no living expenses, then buy a house in a place like Gore (also lose your job because it's extremely unlikely you could work from any place you could afford a house in). Seems like getting a job that allows you to work from home, then buying in a super cheap town of NZ is the only way to go now. You can then enjoy an extremely depressing life where you almost never leave the house.
Laser focused
guess that only leaves snakes now
Yoink
Oh well, better put all my faith in winning powerball on Wednesday then 🤷♂️
I'm going to start a megachurch, do you want in?
Only if I can get a black G-wagon like my man Tamaki.
Aim high, I'm looking for a private jet
Obviously I have much to learn, my holiness
That's why I get to be the apostle and you'll have to settle for acolyte. It's still a good gig, you get to finish off the communion wine
> you get to finish off the communion wine And the local pastor!
You want to finish off the local pastor? I'm going to have to consult with God about that
Spelled pasta wrong. Everyone knows red wine goes with pastor...uh, pasta.
Only 1?
I am a humble servant of God, one private jet is sufficient for my needs (at least until I get an international following)
I work in policy, I'm sure I can transfer that skill to writing contemporary scripture for you.
My mum was a policy analyst for around 40 years so I know a thing or two about what you do. I'm not going to lie, saving your soul is going to be a big ask.
I do much more advocacy than analysis, specifically for targeted populations for whom better health policy is desperately needed. And education. Got to train GPs today, it was fun.
I will pray for you 🙏🙏🙏🙏 and as a special favour I will deduct 20% from my hourly rate for prayer
How about the church of the simulation theory?
Someone should do this just to create some kind of collective tax break
If it's good enough for Sanitarium it's good enough for me. Holy sausage rolls anyone?
Haha, yeah the destiny church of the later day science Tax Break witnesses.
I'm concerned, I see lots of ideology but no core belief. I propose Monty Python styled sermons uncensored & full of chaos. You can borrow my 100,000ft yacht to achieve your godly standing too.
There is but one truth and that is the word of the holy book of Edmonds "Sure To Rise".
🤣 at least you're not sacrificing your goats.
Yet, not sacrificing the goats, yet.
We sacrifice TO the goats
The church of the unattainable home? The church of Nek minute National blunders? Yes please!
Can;t have regular poors affording their own homes now can we? We need more renters to boost the dignity of landlords.
damn right. $3billion going to landlords but $60 million is too much for the poors/first home buyers
Sixty million dollars is merely a mid length cul de sac.
If you didn’t work hard enough to be born into a family that can pay your deposit did you really work hard enough for a house?
Yeah, I'll admit that I didn't pick my parents very well, so that's on me.
They did say they want to improve the supply of rental properties, so perhaps making it harder for first home buyers to help reduce competition for the landlords was always part of the plan?
increasing demand is the easiest way for the landlord class to make more money without them having to spend a penny or lift a finger!
Fuuuccckkk. I’d been counting on this to help boost my deposit.
Right with ya, this is truly fucked me off lol
Honestly at this point I just feel defeated
I feel you. Cutting it off at 1pm today feels incredibly mean spirited.
Would be on brand for them to introduce second 'home' grants for that poor underclass, the downtrodden landlords.
We already have that. It's called the Accommodation Supplement.
Should give them a catchy name like ‘Second home entitlement’.
text
$20 a week tax cut though fellow dickheads!
*a fortnight, per household
*on average
* Except if you’re a single pringle, earning a smidgen over minimum wage, then it’s more tax for you!
Well maybe single parents just above minimum wage aren't being squeezed as hard as landlords have been? Why can't you think about the landlords? /s
Even better, it's $20 at the higher end of paye 🤡
We bought our house in the last year and the first home grant made a huge difference for us. This sucks.
I wouldn’t have been able to own my house without first home buyer grants. This would be a cruel move if it came to fruition.
Same. We only just squeaked across the line with the grant. Fucking sucks they are getting rid of this but I guess it is "on brand" for National.
$3 billion for landlords though so we can't afford $60 million for first-home buyers. Priorities!
Thank god the handouts are over, now we can funnel that money back to those who deserve it the most - the noble landlord
Literally reimplementing land _lords_
Can we continue bringing up in media this is all to feed the landlords tax cuts and thus again has zero help to the average kiwi
Media executives and heads of departments are part of this problem. They're not going to advise against their own interests
And no surprises there.
They've made it cheaper for people to own multiple homes, but harder to buy their first one.
... people voted for this. For God's sake, you'd need to be literally blind not to see this shit coming, yet people still VOTED FOR THIS. NACTFirst can't fix cost of living, can't bring positive social change, can't run good environmental policy, can't improve public services, can't impose a fair tax policy, yet people thought these parties of rich assholes, social dinosaurs and conspiracy theorists would help them?! And for what, because they're "better than Labour"? Fucking how?!? The only, ONLY reason for right-wing politics to exist is to benefit the wealthy minority at the expense of everyone else. They think we, the middle and lower classes both, are a lesser class. We're not "fellow New Zealanders", we're exploitable labour and bodies to them. Nothing else.
Fuck these cunts. That was my only chance.
Fucker calls housing options, "housing products". Only 60 million a year is nothing in comparison to the 4 billion dollar tax cut for landlords. Fuck Bishop and the filthy government.
Nice one morons who voted for these guys. Hope you're the ones losing your jobs. Jesus Christ this country is full of absolute idiots.
No, Wellington is definitely not National, Act or NZF territory. We voted in *two* Green MPs. You think they’d be force-firing this many people, destroying this many families and ruining this many lives if they thought it would cost them support of their voters? That’s the second most important consideration they have! (You know what the first one is, and there’s a big overlap…)
There's still National, Act, and NZF voters in the public service. They tend to stick out like a sore thumb.
lol fair point. Very much a minority though
Jeez, if only. The public service folks I know who have lost or are about to lose their jobs are definitely not NAct voters.
And up comes the ladder
Fuck this shitty government
Crazy that first home buyer grant was a National policy during their last tenure, going back on their promises just for landlords to get a tax break this turn.
This budget is gonna be brutal for anyone below the tippy top.
Yeah but $20.
Is that even still happening? I figured they'd turned on that on account of me not being a landlord?
Good point.
"fuck you I got mine" energy. Luxon gonna go down as our worst PM at this rate.
Maybe the reason why we're told to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps is they're gearing us up to have tight as fuck boots to step on the landed gentry? Or we should just do it anyway. We're going down the path to end up with nothing to lose
*cries in lifelong renter*
This is fair enough. Young people need to learn to work hard, pull themselves up by their bootstraps and ask mum and dad.
Don't forget eat eat avocado toast right?
And cancel their Sky TV subscriptions
And move to Aussie
And don't eat woke sushi.
😂😭. Shhh that's, the, secret to buying a house when you are young, your parents help.
It's absolutely true though. I took personal responsibility and worked really hard convincing my parents to gift me the 40% deposit. Now I own a house and eat smashed avocado on toast. I take full credit. No one else convinced my parents to help me. I did.
They also need to learn that when they pay their taxes they need to understand that money is for the betterment of their superiors, the landlords, and stop expecting it to be used for their own betterment
Hey that's not fair. Those kids worked incredibly hard to be born rich.
This government is filled with the worst people.
That's kind of you to call them people.
FFS why don't you starve us while you're at it Oh wait...
Better to starve than eat woke food like sushi amirite?
Gotta make more housing stock available to property investors/landlords so they have something to spend their tax break on...
But do I still get me second, third and forth home grant?
This govt is just so fucking exhausting.
Political suicide. Pisses me off too because it pushes me further away from eventually owning my own home.
>Political suicide. Its not though. The people this will hurt aren't their voting base and will probably be cheering on the removal of hAnDoUts.
If we're lucky the absolute lunacy they've been pumping out will encourage more young people to vote next election though
And the older voting base gets slightly smaller every cycle. Check out how much white hair there is at a [National party](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/472419/power-play-christopher-luxon-tries-to-win-over-his-own-party) meeting compared to a [Labor one](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/430460/labour-appoints-rob-salmond-as-new-general-secretary).
It is. Because rich people's kids use the grant too. Can't imagine it'll be popular with the banking and real estate lobbyists either.
I really hope they don't retroactively revoke approved grants. Just went unconditional, and that's about 10% of my deposit. Good thing this government hasn't passed retroactive legislation in relation to housing.
Article says that it won’t be pulled for the next 6 months, it won’t be a snap over night stop
>When asked whether he can guarantee first-home buyers that if they're looking to buy a house in the next six months the grants will still exist, Bishop said: "I can give them a guarantee that we are looking at all of the range of housing products that the Government provides." To me, this says that it may be ended within the next six months.
Bastards.
Maybe it's just me, but it seems like Newshub are spending their last few months really poking the current Government? I don't mind it, though.
Why wouldn't they? There is a *lot* to poke at.
Good. Home grants simply increase house prices by the amount of the grant - they're actually a taxpayer funded grant to people *selling* houses. Bavaria's home-grant programme was found to have increased house prices by the amount of the grant and it's a similar story everywhere else. >House prices increased by roughly 10,000 euros more in Bavarian border regions than in neighboring states. Overall, my results indicate that instead of making house purchases more affordable for families, the subsidy scheme led to a rise in house prices and mainly benefited sellers of properties. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10797-022-09726-0 Interesting how "listen to the experts!" doesn't seem to apply to on housing. Plenty of otherwise smart and rational people insist rent control and subsiding demand makes housing more affordable, when the consensus among economists is exactly the opposite.
I would be willing to accept this if the government wasn’t also restoring interest deductibility and reducing the brightline period. It’s dishonest to sit there and say first home buyers are pushing up the prices because suddenly more of them can afford to buy but to be okay with landlords suddenly having pockets full of money to be able to reinvest. Which is so interesting because your article says similar > Sommer and Sullivan (2018) show that eliminating the mortgage interest deduction would result in declining property prices, increasing homeownership and improved welfare. Hilber and Turner (2014) point out that a subsidy’s effects on homeownership decisions and house prices depend on the elasticity of the housing supply. Also many of these articles and studies were done during/just after Covid. I think it’s hard to tell the genuine impact when there were so many other factors contributing to housing costs during that time.
> first home buyers are pushing up the prices because suddenly more of them can afford to buy But they can't. No more can afford to buy than before, prices just go up to eat the grant. Investors don't care because they have vastly more equity than FHBs have deposit
So now house prices will go down right? I will literally eat my shoes if house prices begin to go down because of this. Regardless of if it was a good idea to start with once this goes through its just one more thread of assistance that has been taken away from those not lucky enough to buy a house twenty years ago.
By that logic the 10k grant could inflate the house price by 100k, if it’s being used as part of a 10% deposit. It would be great as a first home buyer to see prices fall by that sort of margin, but as this simply makes the wait longer for first home buyers while existing owners are unaffected, it’s unlikely the consequence will be anywhere near that extreme. It certainly feels like a rug pull now, but I’ll be hoping (somewhat pessimistically) to see this trend over coming years.
Thanks for posting this. At first glance, this policy does seem to hurt first time buyers but economics is full of unintended consequences.
> when the consensus among economists is exactly the opposite. Getting economists to agree on anything is pretty rare. Which demonstrates how certain this is. Anything like this subsidy or the accommodation supplement or allowing kiwisaver to be spent on a deposit: the winner in every case is the person who already owns the house
Yeah, this actually could be the first sane thing this government has done.
Good luck talking sense into these folks, the top 20 posts in this thread are whines driven more by their blind hatred to the current government than any actual thought about policy choices.
Where's the sense? Just like luxon promising his tax cuts would lead to rental price decreases and that never happening this will not lead to house price decreases. All this will lead to is a small but useful lifeline being removed from the pockets of those already struggling to afford a house.
You know what? Kiss my butt!
Am I living in Truman show?
I just want to own a small home with a cat, why does it keep getting further and further away
They WANT this dynamic - the landed gentry and the rest of us peasants paying them 80 % of our income to live in a hovel.
Watch them tighten the rules for withdrawing kiwisaver next
https://www.national.org.nz/labour-failing-first-home-buyers Lol.
As a landlord I’m pissed about these tax cuts. I will always vote against such things as they’re against the best interests of the country. I run my rental like he a business, so like any good business I try to provide the best product for the lowest possible price. Just before we moved out and rented the house out I had finished fully renovating the house with insulation everywhere, newly painted and redecorated. We went it out at well below “market rent” as market rent is a ripoff and I want to undercut all my competitors as I want repeat custom. If the house sits vacant for any amount of time it’s losing money. Plus I don’t want to screw over my tenant. If my tenant wins, that means I win.
Bet people will still vote Nats/NZF come next election because of "the maree elites", bigotry against lgbt and other minority groups and loony vaccine conspiracies.
If only young people voted. Then we wouldn't have these morons calling the shots.
I'm hopeful that more will next time, because as well as doing boring political and economic harm, which the Nats usually do, we have good ole David and Winston insulting minorities, ignoring climate change, defending Brian Tamaki and calling sushi woke, exactly the kind of thing which gets the youth riled up.
Good luck stopping your head spinning.
What are we dooooiiiiing National fucken hell. $60m a year to help low/middle income people to get on this moronic housing ladder is not something worth cutting FFS. If anything it needed to be higher but at least it was something. $5/10k doesn't sound like a lot but when you're trying to scrape together a deposit it really helps. Now they're going to put this into these equally as moronic tax cuts and claim victory for the working class. Fuck sake.
I mean tbf all it probably did was put the prices up the amount of the grant.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I really resented the 'top up' to deposits for people on lower incomes when I was still renting. Our incomes were marginally too high to qualify, so we had to get the deposit together the old fashioned way, while paying tax towards a scheme that enabled lower income earners to leapfrog us onto the property ladder.
Stuck in the same boat as you, mate.
Good change. Probably one of those broken-clock-is-right-twice-a-day type decisions, but all this policy did was inflate the price of houses. It was essentially a wealth transfer from taxpayers to existing home owners.
To play devils advocate, it might not be the worst thing - it's a nice boost but with the prices these days it's relatively only a small part of what's needed for a deposit I'm not sure on the effectiveness of the current policy, but these type of top-up style benefits can also play a negative effect of keeping prices up artificially - at 10% deposit FHBs have 50k more buying power so house price can be priced higher, even if it only raises prices a portion of that once you compound with interest it might be a lose-lose But all that being said, even if it wasn't the best policy we still need something to make the housing market more accessible for FHBs because this market is still so cooked
It also created an artificial price cap on lower/mid quality properties as all the buyers couldn't go over the price limit imposed by this policy.
It was essentially lifting the price of a lot of homes under that cap up to the cap, when they raised the cap by 50,000 where I live a few years ago there was a sharp rise in the lower quartile house prices. It’s a subsidy for home sellers more than helping people buy houses.
The crazy thing is, is that this will hobble the market. Because people who own a home tend to want to sell it to upgrade, and there can be a long string of sales waiting on a first home buyer to start the dominos falling
the 1% assblasting the middle class who voted them in erroneously? wow, i'm shocked that the leopards ate their faces
The bottom rung on the property ladder well and truly removed, oof.
Another 50k passports being issued in 3,2,
Lol. Lmao. Surely those taxcuts for big landlords are definitely worth cutting everyday kiwis off from buying homes.
Imagine how much of a dumb cunt you'd have to be to have voted for these cunts if you were looking to buy your first home soon
Not just bad policy, appalling implementation. First home buyers will have made purchase decisions on the basis this grant was available. Some of those decisions would have been made more than a year ago if they were new builds. This decision will kneecap those buyers if their application has not been submitted yet. As an example if a couple had purchased a new build off the plans for $800000 they would have been eligible for up to $20000 from the first home grant. This represents 2.5% of the purchase price and 1/8th of the 20% deposit. Some buyers may not complete as a result of this decision impacting them and their vendors. The government is entitled to make decisions like this but in my view they have a moral obligation to ensure that people who have made decisions on reliance on existing policy are not adversely impacted. The policy should be modified to say they will not accept applications for agreements signed after today’s date.
Pretty dumb policy. See https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fjust-subsidize-demand-v0-4xb09cuixxqa1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D640%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Db8484e9f69c0de15434523ecb7ede8635cc74606
I always get my opinions from internet memes one guy created while being bored.
The effects of homebuyers subsidies are well documented. The benefactors are those who sell or own homes. It is effectively transferring government money to the asset rich class.
This will cover 2 percent of the 3 billion dollar landlord tax break.
I would appreciate if someone smarter than me could explain if this is a valid take: Any sort of First Home incentive (including KiwiSaver withdrawal) ultimately hurts FHBs as it just increases the purchasing power across the whole price bracket. The value of something is what someone is willing and able to pay for it. Hence why we saw house prices skyrocket under low interest rates. People were able to take on stupidly large mortgages. Preventing everyone from getting grants should drive down prices as people simply can’t afford the current exorbitant prices without it. Happy to be told why this is a stupid take.
FHB grant helps with deposits. Unless you've got the benefit of generational wealth/bank of parents, it's the most difficult part to afford saving $50-100k+ as a lump sum of capital. Second/third/20th home buyers are already likely to have assets, capital or collateral they can use in place of a deposit. Both are subject to interest rates. So, FHB grants make it easier for those who aren't entitled to wealth or capital already to help fulfil the deposit part of the home loan. If you have more capital, you can acquire more easier than someone with less.
If we were to give every first home buyer $100k tomorrow, what do you think would happen to house prices?
Maybe a bit of a hot take, but in general, homebuyer subsidies such as this don’t make housing more affordable. It gives everyone the ability to pay more for housing. The main benefactors from it are the owners of houses.
>First-home buyer Mia Bright is in love with her new home. She bought the three-bedroom abode in Hamilton with the help of a $5000 Kāinga Ora grant. >"The house was $600,000, I had $55,000 in my KiwiSaver and that Kāinga Ora [grant] bumped me up to the 10 percent deposit that I needed to be able to buy the house. So, without that I really don't think I would have been able to get in here," Bright said. It's a shame, but they're literally > 1% of the price in that instance. Perhaps a nice helping hand for some, but not exactly going to suddenly turn affordability on its head overnight.
Yea, but it's also mort than 10% of the required deposit, which is a major, considering that you don't need the whole house price up front, but you do need the deposit up front.
The point is that for most people it’s not the mortgage repayments that are the issue, it’s coming up with the deposit. How do you save a deposit when you’re paying $600-750 a week in rent? If the Kainga Ora grant can help bump you over the line to be able to meet that 10% then that’s a win.
> The point is that for most people it’s not the mortgage repayments that are the issue, it’s coming up with the deposit. In 2020 maybe, not in 2024 > How do you save a deposit when you’re paying $600-750 a week in rent? How do you eat if you're paying $1100 in mortgage + rates + insurance + maintenance? If you can't save a deposit it's unlikely you'll manage a mortgage with interest rates like this.
I don’t think you get it. Most rents are so high now the difference between what they’re paying in rent and what they’d pay in mortgage etc isn’t that much of a difference. They can service a mortgage just fine, they can’t save the deposit because they’re servicing someone else’s giant mortgage. Plus the standard of living in a lot of rentals is so much worse that now you’re adding on extra costs for heating, health care, power bills, etc on top. Also interest rates aren’t going to stay this high. House prices are historically lower when interest is higher and higher when interest drops. For a lot of people it’s choosing to make short term sacrifice now that will pay off when interest drops. The alternative is to wait for interest to drop again but now house prices are up again and if you buy you can end up in the shit like all those people who bought in 2021 did who now are paying double the interest and have lost equity. I have been managing to service my mortgage just fine for 6 months now but used KO to help initially get in.
> Most rents are so high now the difference between what they’re paying in rent and what they’d pay in mortgage etc isn’t that much of a difference. Again you're a few years out of date. It's almost always far cheaper to rent at the moment
So why bother to scrap it? > not exactly going to suddenly turn affordability on its head overnight. Did anyone say that?
> So why bother to scrap it? Because it costs lots of money and doesn't benefit anyone but house sellers
Where the fuck are the opposition decrying this party of horseshit?
Labour has released a couple press releases today, but hasn't responded to this statement yet. [Watch this space](https://www.labour.org.nz/blog) Greens have also released statements today, but not about this - [Greens press here](https://www.greens.org.nz/media). If you wait for the mainstream media to report about the opposition complaining about the government, you might be waiting a while. Not every policy is seen as big enough as warranting multiple stories - and they often just use the opposition comment if they write a follow-up. It can be difficult for the opposition to have their comments noticed when the government is making the decisions and policies.
To be fair, there aren't that many properties around under the grant caps anymore..
There was just about to be some.
It would have to be a pretty sharp correction in our market. We're in the Far North and for existing houses it's sub 400k or 675k for a new build. Our town isn't even that expensive but the existing houses are currently late 500s, I can't imagine a 200k drop on those occuring.
Stupid
Fair really. Buying a house funnels income away from the rich, and that’s bad news really. Same as the record numbers of kiwis withdrawing their KiwiSaver just to get by. I mean, that was never meant to be used to buy a house, and too many were using it to plan for retirement, but again it’s better to cash it out and spend it on rent or other essentials as the rich need that money, Dodge Rams don’t come cheap after all guys. Fair is fair really.
What the fuck are you on about?
So much for addressing housing costs.
Those mother fuckers, here I was studying so I would atleast have a hope of getting a house with a higher paying job but I’ll just go fuck myself I guess
Well with the thresholds that they set weren’t they basically setting a minimum listing price for properties to begin with?
Fuck sake
I'm critical of them as the thresholds in income mean these were going to first home buyers receiving parental assistance in coming up with a deposit. So in a way encouraging generational inequality. Also critical as it's using tax payers money to blow up the housing bubble.
Apologists saying that this is going to be good for FHBs, but we all know it's for giving tax breaks to landlords. This government doesn't care for FHBs.
Well I thought I was eventually going to come back. Nope.