Quote Originally Posted by Bjauck View Post
That is a great return.
You have underlined why NZ has such a small proportion of wealth in financial investments (shares and bonds) compared with residential real estate. When people can get such good (mostly untaxed) returns from leveraged residential housing investment, it is natural that they will tend to park and accumulate their wealth there. It also helps explain why our stock exchange is small in proportion to our GDP and why our houses are expensive in relation to our incomes. NZ is going back to the future of a nation of wealthy landlord families (some absentee and foreign) and inter-generational tenants, who work for foreign-owned companies.

It would take a courageous government with vision to introduce a tax regime which increased the tax take from investment residential real estate, so that the proportion of total returns (capital profit and income) paid in tax equaled the proportion of returns(capital profit and income), from investment in shares, that are paid in tax. The ease at which investment in residential real estate can be leveraged enables large (currently untaxed) capital gains for the owner's equity.
Your right its a great return,although there has been no return,except managing tenants--It started out as our family home and something I could put my energy into--I didnt leverage as some do--and agree with some of your points,but so far Ive been taxed just like with shares--but the market HAS gone a bit crazy and it cant continue --Thats why at this point its a much harder decision(although at the time we didnt know this was going to happen with prices)--It could also crash as well..who knows.
I got lucky with prices ,but if you saw the house before ,you wouldnt recognize it --there are still places where houses are relatively cheap,but you would have to adjust your lifestyle to be in a different area....well..gotta go ..Ive just lost a tenant,and the other one doesnt knoiw how to change a light bulb.