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10:55 am, October 6th, 2025 - 77 comments
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
Is it legitimate for a landlord to claim to be progressive?
depends on if the landlord is progressive 🙂
Given that being politically 'progressive' is relatively nebulously defined and has changed significantly over time, and that it is a self-identifying claim, the 'legitimacy' of it is up to the beholder, but it does seem to be used defensively. Progress is meant to be a good thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism
well some progressives have spent a decade or so enforcing the idea that self identity is king, so I'm not sure your argument works.
I agree though that some landlords try to make out they're doing good things when they're not. It's theoretically possible to be a landlord and progressive at the same time. Gsays would need to be more specific.
My 'argument' was that a beholder's opinion of what is legitimate is up to them, so I don't think you understood my argument, but congrats on bringing it back to your hobby horse.
I'm suggesting that having an objective understanding of progressive matters, and upholding the concept of objective understanding matters too (and is progressive actually).
To that end, we could have a conversation about whether a landlord can be progressive or not, by talking about what that means, rather than leaving it nebulous.
'Progressive' as a political label is deliberately amorphous, it simply isn't an objective term. We here cannot define what is 'progressive or not' because what is 'progressive' is different to different people.
In this case this particular landlord appears to be defending themselves by labelling themselves as 'progressive'.
just because a concept is relative doesn't meant we can't have agreed on definitions in order to discuss said concepts. But we know for instance that it's not progressive to own housing for profit at the expense of people needing a home during a housing crisis.
…that is literally being a landlord.
Do you envisage everyone owning a home as being the only progressive option? What happens to the people that don't want to own a home?
They should have State or council housing, or from not-for-profit housing trusts.
No to private rentals, no to owning other peoples homes.
A couple of things.
First, it's a good idea to distinguish people from ideas. People are not ideas. Ideas are meant to have some internal consistency and be intellectually coherent to someone learning about them for this first time. People are not like that – they are a complete mess. It would be better to ask one or both of the following questions:
Second, we'd need a definition of progressive. It clearly means moving away from some status quo, but moving forward not back (that's regressive). It assumes that human progress is forward, continues forever and is in a direction that is 'good' despite periodic setbacks. That's not an assumption that is easy to accept at the current time. And 'good' tends to mean more free, equal, etc, i.e. the normal collection of liberal virtues. It's a word that maybe people use to avoid calling themselves something more confrontational and stake-in-the-ground, like a liberal or a social-democrat, a socialist, an anarchist-voluntarist, or something. Or maybe it's a portmanteau word that contains all these and just means "not conservative", i.e. not regressive.
So I'd probably cop out of this morass and ask a fairly utilitarian question: "Does landlordism add to or subtract from aggregate human wellbeing?"
in NZ certainly the term progressive gets used to mean not conservative.
That needs to be discussed, but alongside the acceptance that landlordism isn't all landlords, and there may very well be some landlords doing landlordism progressively. The alternative is that the large number of people who rent are perpetually stuck in a very bad situation that cannot change.
'Not All Landlords!'
yikes.
Why couldn't this be accurate? Landlords make profit by charging tenants more than it costs them to own the tenants home, that's an unproductive drain on the economy, that is a Very Bad Situation.
Not necessarily, some rentals are negatively geared and may effectively subsidise tenants’ housing costs.
In that case then they're not making profit are they?
When landlords profit, tenants are overcharged.
Yes & No.
There’s the Capital Gains with the expectation that this more than off-sets any losses incurred.
There’s tax deductions for losses incurred (more so in the past).
There’s a pre-calculated flipping point at which negative becomes positive gearing when the loan principal has come down.
For home owners housing costs are not fixed in time and only taking one snapshot at one moment in time is missing important context.
and some landlords don't need a high rent and don't charge one. I've had one landlord who wanted to cover costs and charge below what most people would expect. They are of course accruing capital gains, but that's not something they do. We could have a conversation about the ethics of what gets done with those CG, but I think it's reasonable to say charging significantly lower than market rents is progress.
Sure, but generally, and including in those examples, the 'goal', the 'point', the 'reason' to be a landlord, is to make a profit, it is an investment, and an investment that doesn't ultimately produce a return isn't really working as an investment.
I've given examples in this thread of people who don't have a rental primarily for making an investment profit which undermine your absolutist definition of a landlord.
profit here being accrued wealth over and above expenses.
Yr examples of 'benevolent' landlords are akin to a slave owner that treats their slaves well.
They are still slave owners. Denying another's freedom.
It can be argued what appears as altruism is self interest well disguised. Being able to charge less than 'market' rents is more likely to secure a longer tenancy.
While I accept some don't want the mortgage I agree with arkie up thread, that is where community providors step in. I see a home as something that is not to be profitted from, along with water, electricity and internet access.
Home ownership has so many benefits beyond the individual pluses. The home is the fabric of communities. It brings stability, pride, reverses inequality and all it's detrimental effects.
it belittles slaves to compare renting to their experience. Landlords don’t deny another’s freedom when compared to a person being owned. Renters can be coerced by circumstances and landlords have culpability in that, but it’s not the same as losing one’s freedom.
Ok, but it’s still a good thing if the landlord rents out a house that is a good home to live in and doesn’t charge much money, even if the landlord benefits.
What’s the difference between a good landlord who is an NGO and a good one who owns privately?
Buying and selling houses is expensive and time consuming. This idea that people will sell their home because they need to move out of town for 6 months doesn’t make sense. It’s anti-community for a start, and pragmatically it wouldn’t work.
Think global, act local in this case means having national standards for landlordism (housing standards, rent caps, long term leases, strong tenant rights) and designing a system that is flexible and varied because what works in Auckland won’t work in Winton, and people’s needs vary a lot.
I fully support social housing as a key tool in both providing stable homes for people and community building, as well as mending the housing crisis. But I don’t support ideological top down imposition that reduces people’s ability to make a good home for themselves.
another example. A son with his two kids want to live close to the grandparents who are in their 70s. They can private rent down the road, or they can live in social housing on the other side of town. Why should they have to live on the other side of town?
"it belittles slaves to compare renting to their experience"
It's a good job I didn't do that.
I was comparing the act of owning slaves with landlording in that they can be justified (they can't afford a mortgage) but don't provide a net societal good.
Also they have in common the lawmakers of both eras are complicit in the activity.
I’m not sure that is better.
I’ve repeatedly given examples of how landlording can be a benefit to society. What’s the difference between an NGO landlord and a private landlord if they are both doing that ethically
Generally speaking? Probably yes.
However, not all landlords are or start out as investors as such. Some end up with a property on their hands that incurs costs but no income unless rented out or sold. When renting it out the landlord’s main objective might just be to be cost-neutral until the market has recovered, for example. Of course, as time goes on, objectives might change, often determined by the landlord’s personal circumstances.
You see however that owning property that someone else is working to pay you for, to cover the costs of that ownership, is still personally profiting the landlord? They get the benefits of owning something that they aren't paying to upkeep, and those paying for it get nothing but temporary occupancy.
What monetary-financial benefits do landlords get, when charging cost-neutral rent? Arguably, having their name on the title without occupancy is forgoing a benefit of ownership. Should tenants enjoy (temporary) occupancy for free and only (!) pay for real-material costs?
The money-financial benefit they get is that they do not have to personally pay for the upkeep of an asset that they own. Isn't that obvious?
Also they can borrow against it, tenants cannot.
No, that doesn't follow, and I haven't made anything like that claim.
People are really tying themselves in knots over this.
We’ve reached the end of constructive convo that started with a rather open-ended question and finished without reaching a mutually agreed conclusion.
Oh, okay then.
the question is whether any landlords can ever be progressive. My argument is that they can, where rent is affordable and the landlord upholds their side of the bargain in providing a home and stability.
Where landlords are charging as much as they can in order to make money, that's a different thing. You seemed to be saying that being a landlord is inherently unethical, but now you accept that some landlords don't always make a profit.
Yes an individual landlord can do something progressive.
This doesn't make the act of being a landlord progressive.
I don't think owning other peoples houses as an investment is progressive.
These two ideas don't contradict each other you understand?
they don't necessarily contradict each other but they do risk ending up in a cul de sac.
How would it work in practical terms for every house to be owned by the person living in it?
I don't think that's the ideal, as i have already said, State, Council and Social Housing should replace it by out competing the private rental market. They can do this because the private market exists to make money for landlords, whereas our goal is housing people.
Would the people in said social housing pay rent?
Yes, as they do now.
They aren't paying as much as they would in a private rental because they're not generating value for the owner of their home.
So the owners of the social housing would be the landlords and the people living in the houses would be tenants?
That isn't a gotcha.
State house tenants rent and Kainga Ora is a 'landlord' too. The difference is that they aren't making gains, they aren't profiting, the goal isn't to provide a financial return to individuals, unlike the private market.
it’s not meant to be a gotcha, I’m trying to understand your thinking.
We agree that some landlordism is beneficial and some isn’t (social housing vs rentier class investment).
The question now is why should social housing tenants pay rent, and how should the amount of rent be established?
'landlordism' isn't a thing either though, the term we are looking for is property investing. Social housing isn't in the game of investing it is in the game of housing people. Social housing tenants should pay rent that is related to their income and it should be low enough to undermine private landlords. Using the state to regulate the market by outcompeting with it. Something that could have been done with Kiwibank for example, otherwise what is the point of state-ownership?
how do we determine the rate of rent related to income?
is it ok for NGOs to charge an amount that enables them to build other houses assuming the rate is income related?
It should be progressive pricing, no more that 25% of income, those most able to afford it pay more than those with lower income and those on supported living payments should be charged even less.
As to rent usage; sure as long as the model is not-for-profit so that any income above maintenance costs is spent housing more people. That's obviously a good thing. The NGO can also borrow against the asset value of the properties they're renting to purchase more houses too.
While those are not examples of private landlords/residential property investors, I have thought that maybe there is a such a thing as a 'progressive' private landlord after all; Someone offering an affordable rent-to-buy arrangement. It's socially 'progressive' and they would be 'progressive'-ly leaving the property investment/landlord game!
The argument being run here is that all landlords are bastards. It's like the way the left often talks about farmers. It's a fail, because we want people to change, and they won't if they're continually being told they're shit no matter what they do.
Yes, in the leftie utopia all housing might be privately owned, or rented from NGOs/social housing. In the meantime, we need to make progress from where we are today. If we don't leave the door open to ethical landlordism, why would anyone bother?
You are twisting what I have said, to paraphrase AB:
the practise of being a landlord is a net negative on society, we should want to discourage individuals from being residential landlords. We won't get progress towards the utopian ideal if we keep trying to imagine fringe cases where a landlords acts against the principles of investment gains.
I'm more a thrutopia person than a utopia one.
If there's no possibility of progressive landlordism, there is no possibility of progressive change. There is no world within our reach at this point in time where all property is owned by the person living it. Or at least, you haven't said how that would work.
But we are largely in agreement that capitalist landlordism is bad and should end. The issue is how to get that and what that would look like. I can imagine a NZ with a mix of social housing (govt, local body, iwi, NGO, co-ops), privately owned housing, and privately owned rentals (eg someone works away from home for a year and rents their house out to someone local to the house rather than leaving it empty). The way to do that without the latter being extractive and exploitative, is to have good legislation but also to encourage models of progressive landlordism.
This doesn't follow at all.
I haven't claimed this or said this at any point.
Or, as I have said, use the power of not being an investment vehicle, and outcompete the private rentals with the not-for-profit models of State, Council and Social housing.
Private rentals are capitalistic regardless of whether you call it 'progressive', as they generate passive income for the owners, income that they did no labour for. This is why i objected to the term 'progressive' as it is imprecise and obscures the issues at the core.
Your question infers a question about the ownership of multiple properties
1.owning a home and a bach was seen as both aspirational and egalitarian – in a time when home ownership was expected
(Railways and Post Office then owned baches for their workers to use in the summer, while others used the tent and caravan – sometimes using the land of their neighbours baches when they travelled).
2.owning a house and then a rental (government super pay out buys) to provide extra income in retirement.
These were seen as part of our Kiwi way. If fewer could do this.
But being wealthier they paid an estate tax (till 1993) and duty on their gifts to relatives (till 2013).
Because we no longer have gift duty and estate tax, the making of CG (with only a token 2 year bright-line test) can be seen as extracting profit without giving back via taxation to wider society.
This creates a class interest (those wealthy) and those with aspiration for wealth via CG without paying tax on that CG or wealth.
Yup the landlord has a case to answer.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360843703/labours-secret-bold-plan-and-luxons-unpopularity-lefts-2026-gamble
@weka at 1.1
That's a bit like a compassionate executioner or benevolent slave owner.
Unfortunately I can't reply to individual comments nor change to mobile. The wee link thingy has disappeared.
I also have to fill out the ziyry box below.
Not ccomplaining just for information's sake.
so a couple renting their house out to a single mum for low rent, while they work in another city can't be progressive because by definition anyone that owns a house and rents it out is inherently regressive? Bit of a self defeating politics there gsays
I'm sure we can come up with rare scenarios.
Far better for said Mum to be able to afford to service the mortgage because society has pivoted away from the landlording racket.
The banks and those with extra dosh were investing in small businesses.
not everyone wants a mortgage though.
And what if said Mum needs to move to another city for 6 months to look after her dying Dad. If she can't rent out her house, what happens?
Loathe to go too far with the hypotheticals, but Dad moves in with daughter and child.
While it is very hard, to be with another at the end times of their life is can be powerfully informative and an opportunity for growth.
all his mates and other family are in his home town, not hers. Also no health care or hospice options where she lives.
Both your and arkie's arguments sound like city arguments btw.
@ arkie @ 1.1.1
The self claim legitimacy seems a little sketchy.
One could rail passionately about housing shortages and inequality but still comfortably feather the nest of them and theirs by helping lock people out of home ownership.
It's not adding up
Absolutely, I am sceptical of their sincerity; simply calling yourself 'progressive' when it vaguely means 'for good things'. Sounds like someone trying to justify their actions.
@ AB @ 1.2
Thanks for that, I agree yr last sentence would have been more accurate, less provocative and probably more constructive.
I will mull over yr other points – ideas vs people.
I should have known better to drop a metaphorical grenade just before my lunch break.
@weka 1.2.1
Yes – we should expect individuals to defy all our blanket categorisations. That's why we should (almost) always cut individuals some slack.
If we instead talk about 'landlordism' we are discussing a particular economic practice within a market. By abstracting it away from individuals it becomes possible to think about it in policy terms, i.e. is it socially useful or not, is it a good use of investment capital, should it receive tax subsidies or tax penalties, does it increase inequality or decrease it? This is exactly how we approach any other economic activity when thinking about how we should treat it. Landlordism is an economic practice, not a personal behaviour or an aspect of identity.
ok, I take your point about abstracting away from individuals, although I would then suggest we talk about ethical landlordism and capitalist landlordism (or something like that). Unless one believes that all houses should be owned by the people living in them (not logistically possible), there will always be people who can provide a home for others. The issue is how that is done.
Five years without alcohol, but with the world the way it is and the way it's heading I wonder if my living a longer life is a good decision.
I think about this too, but on balance I think the more people here who value life the better.
Congrats on the 5 years.
Don't under estimate the value of yr example on others.
Forget the doom merchants, life will get better.
One day at a time brother
Verily verily, old age is a shipwreck.
One reaches a state (retirement) and clings on a fixed income precipice until death.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/money/360842791/i-tried-live-super-i-failed-day-one
Options
1a.Owning a home – kit-set factory build on the back lawn or sub-dividing for income.
1b.Owning a home on a sub-divided section home – tenant-in-shed/caravan (using household plumbing) for income.
Inter-generational
2a.living in a kit-set factory build home (grand-parent on site)
2b.tenant-in-shed (using children to afford paying mortgage on their family home inheritance)
Golden Girls
3a.own collectively with no debt
3b.own and bring in tenants
Double coupling
4a.one building
4b.two building properties (2 town houses/2 flats/cross-lease/house + small build/house + shed)
The governments economic failure and the Green Party alternative.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360843703/labours-secret-bold-plan-and-luxons-unpopularity-lefts-2026-gamble
FACTCHECK – this path had already been set by the government in office in 2023. By a government that understood Keynesian theory.
Anyone claiming Willis is right should not have to misrepresent the setting before making their case.
https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/360844771/nicola-willis-right-nzs-economy-isnt-bad-merchants-misery-claim
First food inflation is not determined by monetary policy and government policy on spending.
Second, the RB forecast inflation at this level now before the 2023 election based on its own monetary policy plan, Treasury advice and government policy in 2023.
It seems to be an unproven claim that the result was dependent on Willis being Finance minister. It was not even based on National and its coalition partners being in government.
Inflation has fallen in other nations and they did shrink their economy to do it.
Yes, this occurs when monetary policy is used to drive down inflation (this was done by many nations that used QE through COVID).
It got worse because they shrank the economy.
Not paying those in health (and operating at 80% staffing) and education a pay increase and ending pay equity will have its consequences.
Willis outreach ministry?
The government is reduced to approving small building projects in schools and hospitals to sustain economic activity.
Infrastructure spending is in decline, blocking Kainga Ora plans means consents are way down and building sector staff have gone to Oz.
The high numbers going to Oz have helped some get lower rent – but some are stuck with their former rent levels and are struggling.
Bishop gets house values held down without much rebuild activity. The thing will be activity before demand for housing builds back up.
The Current Account.
The current account deficit is down. But any garden variety recession will do that provided commodity prices of exports hold up.
https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/quarterly-current-account-deficit-3-4-billion/
The characterization of the NZ economy as being in stagflation is incoherent and miss-leading.
While nobody should claim a 3.5% unemployment was full employment, it certainly doesn't meet the high unemployment rate necessary for stagflation. That point should be highlighted by the fact that National was characterizing the country as beyond full employment (meaning the NAIRU rate) at the time.
In addition, anybody paying attention and their dog knew that inflation was being imported at the time and was being caused by international pressures. In fact, if anything the RBNZ monetary policy response exacerbated the impacts of inflation onto NZ. Unfortunately, NZ's monetary policy response was typical, so we don't get many alternative examples to compare. Nevertheless, Japan did apply an alternative and experienced a lower inflation rate than others over the same period. We can still be pretty confident that NZ's monetary policy brought inflation in as we saw many examples of landlords raising rents as a direct response to interest rate hikes on their mortgages (which feeds back into CPI increases and reinforces further RBNZ interest rate hikes) and we saw no examples of businesses backing off price hikes due to falls in demand.
That article reads like an advertisement for his department at the university of Otago. Come study economics with Dennis who doesn't have any tangible improvements to offer to the English major presently ruining the country's economy. In fact he can’t even tell things are going poorly yet.
https://theconversation.com/nicola-willis-is-right-nzs-economy-isnt-as-bad-as-the-merchants-of-misery-claim-266465
Dennis Wesselbaum is associate professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Otago.
https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/360844771/nicola-willis-right-nzs-economy-isnt-bad-merchants-misery-claim
I’ve no idea why he has multiple different disclosure statements.
Different sites with different policies? RNZ disclosed it, but The Post/Stuff don’t!?
The theconversation.com link is the source of the Post article. The Post seems to have chosen to omit the disclosure statement made by the author originally. The attribution is enough perhaps?
IMO his colleagues should pressure him to decide between a career in teaching economics and making excuses for policies (his side hustle fully supported) going badly.