National promises to let under-30s raid their KiwiSavers for rental bonds (i.stuff.co.nz)

submitted 3 years ago by Slow@lemm.ee to c/newzealand

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[-] deadbeef79000 26 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

When someone says "common sense" or "no brainer" (etc.) what they actually mean it they don't want anyone thinking too hard about it and finding the defects/problem/lie.

Some landlords seem to think that the bond is theirs and use any excuse to claw it "back" from the tenancy tribunal (assuming they lodged it) at the end of a tenancy.

Other landlords seem to think that the bond is there to fund the depreciation of chattels due to normal wear, conveniently misunderstanding what depreciation is.

Bonds are already far too high. The limit, from memory, is four weeks' rent. Which would be OK if rents weren't over inflated (rent is approximately proportional to the equivalent of mortgage interest, though no rent drop when during record low interest rates!).

So, yeah, this is a thinly veiled exercise in transferring (future) KiwiSaver balances to (present) landlords.

[-] luthis 9 points 3 years ago

I wasn't sure where I stood on this until I read your comment. Yep, I fully agree. This is a bad idea.

[-] Xcf456 25 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

In effect more wealth transfer from renters to the pockets of landlords, this time direct from their retirement or first house deposit savings. It's all national are here to do.

[+] SamC 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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[-] Fizz 9 points 3 years ago

I always lose my bond and I never damage the house. Its always $1500 of cleaning or some bullshit.

[-] luthis 11 points 3 years ago

Tribunal man. Dont let them get away with that

[-] Fizz 3 points 3 years ago

I've been to tribunal twice and I'm 100% convinced they always side with the landlord.

[-] Dave 2 points 3 years ago

I just had a peruse through the list of tribunal outcomes here: https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/TT/

I searched for outcomes in June 2023.

Mostly they are landlords taking the tenants to the tribunal, but there are lots of tenants taking the landlord to the tribunal and there are many that are successful.

Unfortunately the data is in a pretty crap format (you have to open each PDF to work out anything) but it seems you've just been unlucky (or had a lack of evidence). There are enough successful tenants in the list that I wouldn't diisuade anyone from doing it. But for sure you need to make sure you take photos when you move in, of everything inside and out.

[-] Fizz 2 points 3 years ago

I take photos when I move in but lose them by the time I move out. I'm genuinely really surprised it's not mostly landlords cleaning house. They must have really been in the wrong.

[-] Dave 1 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

Oh don't get me wrong, there's loads of landlords winning, but generally this seems to be where the landlord is the one that initiated the proceedings. When the tenant initiated, they seem to win.

This isn't surprising, you wouldn't take someone to the tribunal unless they were in the wrong, so you'd expect the applicant to win most of the time. And this doesn't prove whether, for example, the tribunal is more likely to side with the landlord if they start the proceedings - we can't really work that out because the data is in a really poor format. I guess if you had hours of free time you would hand-transcribe the data to work it out, but I don't have that kind of time or patience.

[-] Xcf456 9 points 3 years ago

Yeah it's the first part of what you said. Anyone with experience renting in NZ as a young person will know how common dodgy landlords dubiously claiming bonds are.

On your second point, it's not so strange if you recognise national are out for the minority of NZers that benefit from our status quo fucked housing situation. Their policy is extremely constrained by this fact (Labour too, but less so imo).

[-] 2tapry 15 points 3 years ago

The reason why the Australian Superenuation scheme (what Kiwisaver should be) has been so successful is because it can't be raided.

These clowns have no idea! They clearly don't understand compounding interest. How could they possibly lead the country?

[-] Xcf456 11 points 3 years ago

They understand it alright, they just care about renters and want those gains for their base.

This will help keep rents high because as they keep rising, putting larger amounts down up front as a bond will otherwise become more of a barrier. Same type of barrier as a house deposit but this is apparently where we're at now. Depressing