Not quite
From the Herald
Housing Minister Nick Smith has revealed that Government held data on the proportion of New Zealand homes owned by offshore buyers, which he says is very low compared to other countries.
It turns out that the Government actually has data on the proportion of rental landlords who are overseas. Not the proportion of all homes, and not even the proportion of all rental homes. And even then, the proportion is based on whether the landlords are currently offshore, not whether they were offshore at the time of purchase, which is the topic of controversy (as the Herald does note).
It’s hard to do anything about the landlords vs rentals difference, but if the proportion of rentals owned offshore was also 11%, that would translate to about 4% of New Zealand homes, based on the home ownership figures from the Census.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
it is actually interesting to know the proportion of Australia owners. Or Aussie owners are not classified as offshore buyers…
11 years ago
Aussie owners not resident in NZ are classified as offshore.
Those of us who live and pay tax here are counted as resident in this figure, just like immigrants from anywhere else.
11 years ago
So expats living o/seas declare income in NZ on rental properties to get into this statistic.
Foreign Owners living overseas are unlikely to declare income in NZ as individuals as they get no benefit unless its through a NZ based company so this statistic really doesn’r illuminate the rate of foreign ownership, if anything it might be restated more accurately as “11% of NZ rentals are owned by expats who will eventually return to NZ”.
11 years ago
Even if we rephrase that from “expats who will eventually return to NZ” to “people who plan to possibly visit NZ”, we’re talking about people who ipso facto have valuable assets in New Zealand. They might well be reluctant to commit easily-provable tax offences. It’s a bit different from student loans.
11 years ago