Hawke's Bay Property Investors' Association

027 777 0178

hawkesbay@nzpif.org.nz

News & Updates

Recent updates

06-10-2020

Relief for tenants

The NZ Property Investors Federation is extremely pleased that National is looking to provide more homes for tenants, while better protecting all New Zealanders from living next to antisocial tenants.

National's policy to remove ring fencing of rental losses and reinstate the bright line test from five years back to two years is a good move.

New Zealand tenants are finding it increasingly hard to find suitable rental accommodation to call a home. Neither ring fencing nor the five-year bright line test do anything to improve tenants’ lives, but they are a tremendous disincentive for people to provide rental property.

Ring fencing losses increases the cost of providing a rental property in the first few years of ownership when costs usually outweigh what tenants can pay in rent. Ironically it then allows owners to claim the loss, at some later stage, when the owner doesn’t need any help because the property is profitable. It was always a very strange policy to introduce in the middle of a rental crisis for tenants.

The NZPIF was the only organisation to provide research on the use of 90-day no stated reason notices. It showed that the notices were very rarely used and were mostly used to manage anti-social tenants. The 98% of tenants who are socially reliable had nothing to fear from the 90-day notice and probably didn’t even know it existed.

Removing the 90-day notice was done for ideological not practical reasons. While it was rarely used, it still provided protection for any neighbours’ unfortunate enough to live next door to the approximately 12,500 antisocial tenants given this notice each year.

National’s measures will encourage more people to provide rental properties which will be a welcome relief to all those tenants in emergency housing or struggling to find suitable rental accommodation.

ENDS

About NZPIF

The New Zealand Property Investors’ Federation represents 7000 property owners and is responsible for educating and supporting landlords to ensure New Zealanders have access to high quality rental properties.

For further information please contact

Sharon Cullwick, NZPIF Executive Officer

Sharon.cullwick@nzpif.org.nz, 0277770178

Tags: media release