How does the government Budget work and what does that mean for you?
Finance Minister Grant Robertson will reveal how the Government plans to spend its money on Thursday when he unveils this year’s Budget. While it’s expected that there will be few surprises and little extravagance, Stuff asked five people what one thing should be top of the list for new spending.
Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images Richard Wagstaff, Council of Trade Unions president: A long-term plan for investment in the economy and public services. Including a focus on creating a more productive, sustainable and inclusive society with an economy which works for people. This plan needs to articulate what Build Back Better means for all New Zealanders.
Investors have no moral obligation , Property Investors Federation says stuff.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from stuff.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
About a fifth said they would sell some or all of their properties. But economist Shamubeel Eaqub said investors could find it harder to raise rent than they expected. Rents were not usually set according to investors’ costs, but instead driven by the limit of what tenants could afford to pay. “Rents are set at what the market will bear,” he said. “People will charge the maximum they can get in the market.” That had been evident when, in a period of falling interest rates, when many investors’ costs had dropped, rents continued to rise.
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Rent prices are driven most by what people can afford to pay, rather than what covers landlord costs, Shamubeel Eaqub says.
Ruapehu district in the Manawatu/Whanganui region and Kawerau district in the Bay of Plenty topped the list of the districts to with the fastest rent increases. Rents in both districts rose up by 30.9 per cent in February, compared to the same period last year. Rounding out the top five fastest rent increase districts were Central Hawkes Bay district, up 29.6 per cent, Carterton in the Wellington region, up 24.7 per cent, and Kaipara district in Northland up 22.3 per cent. Patterson said many of these provincial centres offered good lifestyle propositions and were located near cities where rents were relatively more expensive to begin with.
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The Property Investors Federation has been accused of “heavy industry lobbying” over the Government s housing changes. (File photo)
An economics professor has taken a swing at the New Zealand Property Investors Federation (NZPIF), accusing them of engaging in “heavy industry lobbying” as they argue against the Government’s new housing policies. Auckland University’s Robert MacCulloch says the group is attempting to scare the public and dissuade the government from pursuing changes, which include a doubling of the bright-line test and ending interest deductibility for investors. He said he usually tried to be non-partisan and avoid picking a fight, but his impression of investors’ reaction to policy change was “not so much arguing good or bad economics, but heavy industry lobbying.”