Housing crisis: No sign yet landlords are quitting housing market like they threatened

PHOTO: New Zealand landlords

Landlords don’t appear to be following through with threats to sell-up en masse after the Government hit them with new costs.

There were actually fewer properties for sale at the end of April than at the beginning.

In March, the Government said it would phase out investors’ ability to write interest costs off their tax liabilities, bringing them into line with owner-occupiers. In response, some landlords threatened to evict their tenants and sell, ACT leader David Seymour said there would be a “stampede of landlords leaving the residential tenancy market”, and one high-profile real estate agent claimed investors were bailing out because “the fun and appeal of being a landlord is diminishing”.

But none of that is showing up in the data.

“There’s been some talk out there some investors will have to sell their properties to raise equity to be able afford other properties, or to be able to cover the increase in tax they’re going to have,” said Nick Goodall, head of research at CoreLogic, which analyses property market trends.

“Looking at the Trade Me property data, we see there’s been a relatively consistent number of properties come to market. The total number of properties listed for sale at the end of April was actually lower than at the start of April. We haven’t seen any flood of properties being sold by investors just yet.”