Investors, urban development focus of policy

WELLINGTON: National Party leader Judith Collins is promising property investors a tax break by reducing the brightline test to two years in an effort to make more Kiwis landlords.

If elected, National would also pass emergency legislation in its first 100 days to force councils to release land for 30 years of urban development and sell state houses to their occupants.

Labour leader Jacinda Ardern criticised the policy, saying it would ‘‘take us back to the 1990s’’ and move New Zealand away from delivering housing to firsthome buyers and building state houses.

‘‘To suggest that as an answer to the housing troubles that New Zealand experiences, to sell off state houses, I think is absolutely wrong,’’ Ms Ardern said.

National’s housing policy promises to allow social tenants to buy the houses they lived in under a renttoown or shared equity scheme.

Ms Collins promised to build as many state houses as they sold off to tenants under the scheme and would continue the current Government’s workstream to reduce the social housing waitlist.

National would also take the brightline test — the number of years someone has to own a property before they can sell it without the profits being taxed — back to two years. It is now five years.

Ms Collins said ‘‘all that did was make it more difficult for people to be enticed into being landlords’’.

And it would repeal ringfencing rules that prevent people who run rental properties at a loss from claiming this as a tax break against their other income.

Reducing the brightline test and repealing the ringfencing rules would cost $480 million.

Asked whether it was the right time to give tax breaks to property investors, Ms Collins said: ‘‘You know what? Right now is the right time to get more people providing houses for people to rent.’’

Ms Collins said she did not want to see people’s equity affected by a decrease in house prices, but wanted to see them made more affordable.

Her plan to make housing more affordable was to build more houses which would make them cheaper — especially for firsthome buyers.

The key to building more was repealing the Resource Management Act, which both National and Labour had promised, as that would allow the consent process to be much faster.

Ms Collins said ideally she would like to see house prices stabilise around the country as they had in Christchurch.

There the median house price of $461,000 was 5.6 times the median income, compared with Auckland’s $830,000 median house price at 8.6 times the median income, according the 16th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey.

As well, National housing spokeswoman Jacqui Dean said they would ‘‘simplify’’ the Healthy Homes regulations and repeal the ‘‘unwieldy’’ recently passed rental regulations so it was easier for landlords to comply.

‘‘This will stop good landlords from fleeing the market due to cost, bringing down the cost of rents and ensuring there are enough rental properties on the market to meet demand,’’ Mrs Dean said.

But Labour said such measures would benefit only property speculators. — The New Zealand Herald

spokeswoman Jan Logie said the party had long advocated for an end to conversion therapy, and was pleased to see Labour ‘‘finally come on board to stop this harmful practice’’.

She welcomed the other aspects of Labour’s policy as well, saying it was an example of shared values between the parties, but called for further measures including creating an office for rainbow communities. — RNZ